R     PUT      ALP 


The 
Russian  Bastille 


BY 

SIMON  O.  POLLOCK 


CHICAGO 

CHARLES  H.  KKRR  &  COMPANY 
1908 


COPYRIGHT  1908  BY 
CHARLES  H.  KERR  &  COMPANY 


"The  blessed  time  will  come 
When  from  the  martyrs'  graves 
Will  rise  a  mighty  nation 
That  will  avenge  all  wrongs." 

— From  a  Russian  Revolutionary  Song. 


M191495 


PREFACE. 

The  truthful  words  about  the  Schlusselburg  Po- 
litical Prison  should  serve  the  cause  of  Russian 
freedom.  The  story  was  written  during  the  short 
period  of  "Days  of  Liberty"  in  Russia,  when 
there  was  hope  that  the  Fortress  would  no  longer 
be  used  as  a  political  dungeon,  when  its  doors 
were  thrown  open  and  the  friends  of  the  released 
inmates  were  enabled  to  visit  the  very  cells  where 
Vera  Figner,  Herman  Alexanrowitch  Lopatin  and 
others  spent  scores  of  years  in  seclusion  and  where 
Nicholas  Morosoff  wrote  his  Astronomical  Inter- 
pretation of  the  Apocalypse. 

But  since  then  the  scale  of  Nemesis  has  turned 
once  more.  The  power  of  the  autocracy  is  again 
restored  and  the  doors  of  the  Schlusselburg  Dun- 
geon are  closed  to  hide  again  from  the  world  the 
awful  mystery  of  its  solitary  cells.  The  life  of 
the  new  inmates  is  again  dribbling  out  slowly  and 
silently,  drop  by  drop. 

NICHOLAS  TCHAYKOVSKY. 
20th  of  July,  1907. 
London. 


NOTE — Nicholas  Tchaykovsky,  who  wrote  the 
preface,  shortly  after  July,  1907,  wen>t  to  Russia. 
He  and  Catherine  Breshkovsky,  who  also  continued 
her  activity  there,  were  soon  arrested  and  are  now 
imprisoned  in  the  Sts.  Peter  and  Paul  Fortress  in 
St.  Petersburg. 


THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE. 
I 

"The  history  of  mankind  gives  the 
assurance  that  the  principles  of  liberty 
will  ultimately  triumph  over  oppres- 
sion, and  that  human  happiness  will 
in  time  cease  to  be  only  a  dream. 
But  the  road  to  liberty  is  covered  with 
so  many  martyrs  and  the  pages  of  his- 
tory are  so  soiled  with  so  much  of 
humanity's  blood,  that  one  often  de- 
spairs of  the  cause  of  the  human  race. ' ' 

Such  are  the  words  of  Mr.  L.  Mel- 
shin- Yacoubovitch,  a  Russian  poet, 
journalist  and  revolutionist  in  his  book, 
"The  Schlusselburg  Prisoners,"  re- 
cently published  in  St.  Petersburg. 
They  are  words  embodying  thoughts 
which  inevitably  force  themselves  upon 
anyone  who  has  acquired  only  cur- 


10  THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

sory  knowledge  of  the  facts  concerning 
the  prison  near  St.  Petersburg,  known 
as  the  Schlusselburg  Fortress,  which 
was  abolished  after  the  manifesto  of 
October,  1905,  and  restored  in  Septem- 
ber, 1906,  and  which  for  years  kept, 
and  still  keeps  within  its  walls,  the 
ablest  and  noblest  pioneer  offsprings 
of  the  Russian  revolution. 

The  Schlusselburg  Fortress  was  not 
an  ordinary  prison.  It  was  a  Bastille 
—a  place  for  the  arbitrary  incarcera- 
tion, torture  and  execution  of  political 
offenders.  It  is  situated  on  an  island 
on  the  Neva,  fifty-four  north  of  St. 
Petersburg.  In  earlier  days  it  had 
been  used  as  a  prison,  but  not  until  the 
summer  of  1884,  after  a  long  disuse 
and  desertion,  was  it  consigned  to  the 
purpose  which  it  so  effectively  served 
for  more  than  twenty-one  years. 

Before  that  time  the  Sts.  Peter  and 
Paul  Fortress,  within  the  boundaries 
of  the  capital,  was  the  national  Bas- 


THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE  11 

tille.  The  Alexeieff  Ravelin  and  the 
Trubetzkoy  Bastion,  towers  within 
this  Fortress,  kept  the  convicted  revo- 
lutionists in  absolute  seclusion.  They 
were  well  equipped  for  the  confining 
of  the  prisoners  and  well  served  all 
purposes  of  the  government.  Here 
Peter  I.  tortured  and  killed  his  son 
Alexis.  Here  were  buried  alive  those 
who  protested  against  the  assassina- 
tion of  Paul  I  by  the  satellites  of  Cath- 
erine II.,  his  wife.  In  this  Fortress 
were  imprisoned  the  Decembrists,  the 
first  revolutionists  during  the  reign  of 
Nicholas  I.,  before  their  deportation  to 
hard  labor,  and  here,  five  of  them — 
Poet  Beleieff,  Count  Pastel,  Brothers 
Princes  Muravieff  and  marine  officer 
Bestuscheff  Eumin,  were  hanged.  The 
Petropavlovka,  as  it  has  been  other- 
wise known,  also  kept  imprisoned  the 
reformers  in  the  cause  of  religion  and 
all  patriots  of  minor  nationalities,  Pol- 
ish or  South  Eussian,  who  demanded 


12  THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

national  autonomy  and  independence 
from  Eussia.  It  was  a  thoroughly  re- 
liable dungeon,  even  after  its  abolition 
as  a  hard  labor  prison,  when  it  became 
a  place  for  preliminary  confinement 
and  detention.  As  such  it  numbered 
the  committee  of  Journalists  and 
Poets,  consisting  of  Maxim  Gorky, 
N.  F.  Annensky,  J.  B.  Hessen  and 
others,  who,  on  the  eve  of  the 
workingmen's  procession,  on  the 
22d  day  of  January,  1905,  petitioned 
the  Secretary  of  Interior  to  prevent 
the  massacre  then  openly  contemplat- 
ed by  General  Trepoff.  During  the 
same  year,  and  shortly  after  the  first 
general  strike,  there  were  imprisoned 
in  this  Fortress  Leo  Deutch,  the  well 
known  Social  Democrat  and  author  of 
" Sixteen  Years  in  Siberia,"  who  re- 
turned to  Eussia  after  the  manifesto 
of  1905,  Nosar  Krustaleff,  the  chair- 
man of  the  now  historical  "Council  of 
the  Workingmen's  Deputies  in  St.  Pet- 


THE  BTJSSIAN  BASTILLE  13 

ersburg"  and  many  others1.  The 
causes  which  prior  to  1884  prompted 
the  government  to  remove  the  "dan- 
gerous" prisoners  from  the  Fortress 
in  the  capital  to  a  more  isolated  place 
were  deeply  rooted  in  the  peculiar  fea- 
tures of  the  revolutionary  movement 
of  those  days. 


1  Alexander  S.  Prugavin,  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul 
Fortress,  pp.  4-6  (in  Russian).  St.  Petersburg, 
1906. 


n 


The  period  in  Russian  history  fol- 
lowing the  emancipation  of  the  serfs 
in  1861  was  marked  by  widespread  dis- 
content. The  conditions  then  prevail- 
ing and  the  movement  resulting  there- 
from are  described  in  the  article 
"Ekatherina  Breshkovskaia  and  The 
Russian  Revolution"  as  follows: 
"Many  young  Russian  reformers  had 
soon  realized  that  the  emancipation, 
instead  of  being  a  great  reform  was 
but  a  means  of  deceit  and  a  means  of 
enrichment  for  the  nobility  and  the 
government;  that  if  the  Russian  peas- 
ants had  been  enlightened  upon  their 
rights  and  instructed  upon  the  condi- 
tions of  their  liberation,  the  reform 
would  have  emancipated  the  peasantry 
instead  of  enslaving  it  to  the  govern- 
ment by  the  heavy  payments  it  had 

14 


THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE  15 

to  make  for  the  freedom  and  land  it 
had  been  given.  The  restrictions 
placed  upon  the  civic  life  of  the  peas- 
antry, for  the  purpose  of  securing  the 
"payments"  conclusively  fastened  on 
it  a  new  system  of  dependence  on  the 
bureaucracy,  and  within  two  years 
after  the  reform,  in  twenty-nine  prov- 
inces only,  according  to  the  report  of 
the  Secretary  of  Interior,  there  were 
1,100  peasants'  uprisings.  The  peas- 
ants opposed  the  "liberty."  They 
could  not  subsist  under  the  new  con- 
ditions. The  land  allotted  them  was  in- 
sufficient for  their  maintenance  and 
they  could  not  bear  the  burden  of 
the  new  payments.  The  uprisings  were 
suppressed  by  force  of  arms.  The 
freed  serfs  were  killed  and  wounded 
for  their  ingratitude  to  the  Czar,  "who 
gave  them  freedom."  These  events 
inaugurated  the  revolutionary  move- 
ment of  those  days,  at  first  a  movement 
of  education.  The  motto  was:  "Let 


16  THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

us  take  a  lesson  from  these  o<  .r- 
rences;  let  us  first  educate  the  masses 
and  then  with  their  own  aid  give  them 
true  and  just  freedom  and  happiness. ' ' 
The  revealed  poverty  added  to  the  ex- 
alted devotion  to  the  cause  of  the  peo- 
ple. Then  the  Paris  Commune  of  1871 
with  its  tragic  downfall  followed.  It 
affected  the  revolutionary  mind  in 
Eussia  more  than  elsewhere  and  forced 
to  the  front  the  problem  of  an  exten- 
sive revolutionary  propaganda.  "We 
see  in  the  beginning  of  the  seventies 
an  influx  of  Eussian  young  men  and 
young  women  into  Switzerland,  where 
they  went  to  learn  social  science  and 
wherefrom  they  intended  to  return  to 
Eussia  well  equipped  with  the  know- 
ledge and  experience  necessary  in  the 
impending  revolutionary  movement. 
The  lectures  of  the  Eussian  fu- 
gitive journalists  Peter  Lavroff, 
Bakunin,  Tkacheff  and  others,  as 
well  as  the  contact  with  many 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  17 

c<  .aunards,  prepared  the  youth  for 
the  struggle  of  the  future  days.  The 
Bussian  government  was  alarmed.  In 
1873  it  issued  the  famous  Ukas  to  the 
"Bussian  men  and  women  in  Switzer- 
land," ordering  them  to  leave  their 
revolutionary  studies  and  return  to 
Bussia.  It  threatened  to  deprive  them 
of  the  privilege  to  practice  their  pro- 
fessions or  vocations,  if  they  would  not 
return  within  the  time  fixed  in  the 
Ukas.  But  it  was  of  no  avail.  The 
men  and  women  remained  abroad  and 
returned  only  when  ready  for  the  work 
of  propaganda,  which  was  carried  on 
in  a  manner  most  unique  in  the  history 
of  such  movements.  Realizing  the  ex- 
isting social  iniquities,  the  youth  con- 
sidered it  a  crime  to  enjoy  pleasures  of 
life,  while  the  people  were  enmeshed 
in  complete  poverty  and  utter  igno- 
rance. They  believed  that  they  owed 
the  people  the  duty  of  education  and 
revolution.  They  claimed  that  the 


18  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

wealth  they  and  their  fathers  owned 
was  the  property  of  the  peo- 
ple, of  which  they  were  deprived 
by  the  strong  and  the  unjust. 
And  the  cry  was:  "Go  among  the 
people  and  give  back  to  them  what  has 
wrongfully  been  taken  from  them." 
And  thousands  of  young  men  and 
young  women  stripped  themselves  of 
their  homes,  their  friends,  their  com- 
forts and  their  pleasures,  and  went 
among  the  people.  In  the  disguise 
of  laborers,  apprentices,  traveling  men, 
teachers,  they  go  all  over  Russia,  cover 
every  available  village  and  hamlet 
teaching,  educating,  preaching.  This 
great  and  until  then  unequalled  move- 
ment is  known  in  Russian  history  as 
the  ' '  peasantist ' '  movement.  When  in 
1875  Count  Palen,  then  Secretary  of 
Justice,  reported  the  result  of  his  in- 
vestigation of  this  crusade,  he  claimed 


THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE  19 

that  it  affected  no  less  than  thirty- 
seven  provinces.1 

At  about  this  time,  Professor  Tan- 
sen,  in  an  elaborate  book  on  distribu- 
tion of  lands  and  taxes  in  Russia,  es- 
tablished the  fact  that  the  allotments  or 
parcels  held  by  the  peasants  were 
hardly  sufficient  to  pay  the  taxes  and 
because  of  that  reason  the  peasants 
were  compelled  to  look  for  work  in  the 
cities  during  the  winter  season.  The  cry 
of  land  was  taken  up  by  the  legitimate 
liberal  press.  Notwithstanding  all 
this  the  demand  was  disregarded.  The 
peasants  were  kept  in  ignorance;  the 
appeals  of  the  reformers  were  ignored 
and  the  press  was  placed  under  a  cen- 
sorship similar  to  that  under  Nicho- 
las I. 

In  the  beginning  of  1877  the  political 
case  of  "50,"  with  many  female  de- 


1  "Ekatherina  Breslikovskaia  and  the  Russian 
Revolution,"  by  this  author,  in  the  "Worker,"  De- 
cember 25th,  1904. 


20  THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

fendants,  stirred  the  nation.  During 
the  same  year,  the  case  of  "193"  fol- 
lowed. It  began  in  October,  1877,  and 
was  finished  in  January,  1878.  It  was 
a  result  of  the  arrest  of  over  one  thou- 
sand men  and  women  who  were  held  in 
preliminary  custody  for  four  years, 
before  "193"  were  singled  out  for 
trial.  Katherine  Breshkovsky  and 
many  others  were  sentenced  to  hard 
labor  in  this  case. 

The  Society  "Semlia  e  Volia" 
(Land  and  Liberty),  to  which  most  of 
the  popagandists  belonged,  was  more 
an  educational  than  a  political  or- 
ganization. But  though  the  agitation 
was  peaceful,  it  was  met  by  prosecu- 
tion more  severe  than  any  previously 
known  in  Russian  history.  The  meth- 
ods of  oppression  and  persecution 
which  had  been  employed  inflamed  the 
educated  Russian  youth  and  after  a 
discussion  of  the  conditions  at  secret 
conventions,  held  in  1879  in  Woronesh 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  21 

and  Lipetzk,  called  by  the  "Land  and 
Liberty,"  the  party  "Narodania  Vo- 
lia"  (People's  Will),  with  terrorism  as 
its  principal  weapon,  was  organized. 
Having  been  inaugurated  by  Vera  Sas- 
sulitch,  who,  in  1878  shot  at  General 
Trepoff  to  avenge  the  flogging  of  Bo- 
goluboff,  a  consumptive  revolution- 
ist, terrorism  spread,  not  only  as  a 
means  of  self  defense,  but  also  as  a 
method  of  attack.  It  was  a  policy  of 
"violence  against  violence,"  purport- 
ing by  a  series  of  organized  attacks 
upon  the  government,  to  force  political 
and  economical  concessions  from  the 
autocracy.  The  world  then  witnessed 
a  heroic  duel  between  a  small  number 
of  men  and  women  and  an  army  of 
gendarmes,  prosecutors  and  spies. 
The  movement  was  bound  to  fail,  since 
it  was  one  almost  purely  of  "intellec- 
tuals, ' '  having  but  little  foundation  in 
the  will  of  the  masses.  But  until  it 
was  finally  crushed,  in  1887,  it  kept  the 


22  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

government  in  constant  fear  for  its 
existence. 

The  more  dangerous  revolutionists 
whose  lives  were  spared  by  the  gen- 
darmes, were  thrown  into  the  Sts.  Pet- 
ers and  Paul  Fortress  in  St.  Peters- 
burg. As  a  result  of  its  regime,  most 
of  the  prisoners  were  soon  attacked  by 
consumption,  insanity  or  other  dis- 
eases. Among  the  first  to  perish  dur- 
ing the  first  two  years  of  their  impris- 
onment in  the  Fortress,  were  Alexan- 
der Mikhailoff,  Obolesheff,  Shiraieff, 
Telaloff,  all  members  of  the  "Narod- 
naia  Volia."  Female  revolutionists 
were  also  incarcerated  in  the  Fortress ; 
among  them  were  Terentieva  and 
Helfman,  who  died  there  shortly  after 
their  term  began,  but  the  circum- 
stances attending  tlieir  death  have  not 
been  disclosed.  The  fate  of  Helf man's 
baby  born  in  jail  is  altogether  un- 
known. There  was  fear  that  other 
prisoners  might  soon  follow.  Through 


THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE  23 

a  conspiracy  between  prisoners  and 
guards  in  1881,  however,  some  modifi- 
cation of  the  grosser  cruelties  of  the 
dungteon  was  obtained  and  the  lot  of 
the  inmates  was  for  a  time  made  more 
tolerable. 

The  head  of  this  conspiracy  was  Ser- 
gius  Netchaieff,  who  had  inaugurated 
a  revolutionary  movement  in  1869. 
Escaping  to  Switzerland,  he  had  been 
extradited  in  1872,  on  the  false  plea 
that  he  was  a  felon  and  not  a  political 
offender.  Tried  in  1873,  he  had  been 
sentenced  to  ten  years  at  hard  labor 
and  subsequent  banishment  to  Siberia. 
He  was,  however,  imprisoned  in  the 
Sts.  Peter  and  Paul  Fortress  as  a  polit- 
ical offender,  and  in  1877,  before  his 
term  had  expired,  had  been  tried  for 
a  violation  of  the  rules  of  the  Fortress 
and  sentenced  to  life  imprisonment. 
He  was  the  first  revolutionist  who 
succeeded  in  winning  over  the  soldiers 
of  the  prison  guard.  These  soldiers 


24  THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

not  only  established  for  him  a  system 
of  communication  with  the  Executive 
Committee  of  his  party,  but  they  even 
conspired  to  place  the  Emperor  under 
arrest  on  his  visit  to  the  Fortress.  It 
was  during  the  time  when  the  "Na- 
rodnaia  Volia"  was  bent  upon  the  as- 
sassination of  Alexander  II.,  and  the 
Executive  Committee  placed  Netcha- 
ieff  in  the  dilemma  of  choosing  the  lib- 
eration of  all  prisoners,  including  him- 
self, or  the  assassination  of  Alexander 
II.  One  enterprise  excluded  the  other, 
and  there  was  fear  that  if  all  prisoners 
were  to  escape  from  the  Fortress,  the 
Czar  would,  in  his  fear,  take  extraor- 
dinary precautions  for  his  safety  and 
a  new  era  of  persecutions  would  fol- 
low. 

Without  a  murmur  Netchaieff  re- 
fused to  be  liberated.  Alexander  II. 
fell  on  the  1st  day  of  March,  1881.  Net- 
chaieff remained  in  the  Fortress.  But 
soon  thereafter  the  police  discovered 


THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE  25 

the  garrison's  conspiracy.  Forty  sol- 
diers were  arrested  and  tried  in  De- 
cember, 1882.  The  fate  of  Netchaieff 
was  unknown  until  after  October,  1905. 
It  has  now  been  established  that  this 
iron  man  died  on  the  9th  day  of  May, 
1883,  in  the  Fortress,  and  that  after 
the  discovery  of  the  plot  he  was  con- 
stantly kept  in  a  cell  specially  desig- 
nated for  disobedient  prisoners,  hav- 
ing been  deprived  even  of  the  limtied 
privileges  of  the  jail.1  The  govern- 
ment then  concluded  to  place  the  dan- 
gerous political  prisoners  beyong  pos- 
sible reach,  and  Count  Dmitri  Tolstoi, 
then  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior,  or- 
dered the  re-establishment  of  the 
Schlusselburg  Fortress.  This  jail  had 
been  built  in  1384.  Its  traditions  fully 
justified  the  choice  of  the  secretary. 
Here  perished  not  only  the  enemies  of 
the  old  Czars  from  the  ranks  of  nobil- 


1  The  Past   (Biloie),  monthly  magazine  in  Rus- 
sian, No.  F,  July,  1906,  p.  170. 


26  THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

ity,  but  even  members  of  the  Czars' 
families  not  in  favor  with  them,  had 
found  their  death  in  the  Schlusselburg 
Fortress.  Among  them  were  Czarina 
Eudoxie  Lopoukhin,  the  first  wife  of 
Peter  the  Great,  and  Czarewitz  Johan 
Antonowitz,  who  was  strangled  there 
during  the  reign  of  Catherine  II.  This 
old  dungeon  and  mainstay  of  autoc- 
racy was  hurriedly  renovated  and  re- 
paired and  the  Eussian  Bastille  was 
founded. 


m 

In  August,  1884,  the  first  barge  with 
twelve  prisoners  left  the  Eavelin  for 
Schlusselburg.  On  the  barge  the  pris- 
oners were  not  allowed  to  see  one  an- 
other. Polivanoff  relates  that  they 
were  all  chained  hand  and  foot  and 
were  placed  in  separate  cells  in  the 
swimming  prison.1  This  was  the 
gloomy  prologue  to  the  history  of  the 
Bastille. 

A  long,  narrow  and  dark  corridor, 
dimly  lighted  by  lamps;  small,  damp, 
half-dark  cells  on  both  sides  of  the  cor- 
ridor, barred  and  locked  by  iron  and 
steel;  all  about  the  corridors  gendarmes 
and  wardens  now  and  then  looking 
into  the  openings  of  the  cell  doors; 
sentinels  outside;  towers  and  walls 


1  Peter  Polivanoff,   "Alexeiff  Ravelin,"  in  Rus- 
sian, 1904. 

27 


28  THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

surrounding  the  prison  yards  and  cells 
and  water  all  around — such  was  the 
dungeon  to  which  these  prisoners  were 
consigned. 

The  question  of  who  "  deserved " 
Schlusselberg  was  regulated  by  rules 
embodied  in  the  General  Code  of  Laws, 
which  provided  that  only  revolution- 
ists, who  after  a  trial  were  sentenced 
to  hard  labor  for  lifetime  or  whose 
death  sentence  was  commuted  to  a 
term  of  years  at  hard  labor,  were  to  be 
placed  in  the  Bastille.  There  were  other 
prisons  in  European  and  Asiatic  Bus- 
sia  in  which  revolutionists  were  con- 
fined. The  Bastille,  however,  purport- 
ed to  serve  as  a  permanent  threat  to 
all  Russia,  and  the  final  disposition  of 
prisoners  was  therefore  left  to  the  dis- 
cretion of  the  Department  of  Police. 

The  Police  Department,  however, 
used  its  discretion  freely.  Thus  there 
were  to  be  found  in  the  Bastille  among 
the  life  prisoners,  men  like  Vasily  Kar- 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  29 

aouloff,  who  had  been  sentenced  to 
four  years  at  hard  labor  and  to  subse- 
quent deportation  to  Siberia.  There 
was  also  to  be  found  there  one  Michael 
Lagovsky,  an  army  officer,  who,  having 
been  punished  by  administrative  or- 
der, was  also  to  be  deported  to  Siberia, 
But  after  the  expiration  of  his  term  of 
five  years,  the  Police  ^Department, 
without  trial  and  with  the  approval 
of  Alexander  III., ' '  prolonged ' 9  his  im- 
prisonment to  a  "life"  term. 

At  the  end  of  1884  we  find  there  thir- 
ty-six men:  Eleven  immigrants  from 
the  Eavelin  (Frolenko,  Morosoff,  Tri- 
goni,  Grachefsky,  Arontchik,  Isaieff, 
Yurii  Bodganowitch,  Polivanoff,  Sla- 
topolsky,  Klimenko,  marine  officer 
Bucevitch) ;  eleven  new  arrivals  from 
the  Kara  prison  in  Siberia  (Mishkin, 
Popoff,  Malavsky,  Dolgushin,  Stched- 
rin,  Buzinsky,  Kobiliansky,  Minakoff, 
Gellis,  Yurkovsky,  Krishanovsky) ; 
eleven  participants  in  the  Military 


30  TJffE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

case  of  Vera  Figner;  (Vera  Figner, 
Ludmilla  A.  Wolkenstein,  Nemelov- 
sky,  Wassily  Ivanoff,  Surovzeff  and 
army  officers  Ashenbrenner,  Pokhit- 
onoff,  Youvacheff,  Tikkanowitch, 
Stromberg  and  Rogatcheff,  of  whom 
the  last  two  were  hanged  immediately 
upon  their  arrival) ;  and  four  partici- 
pants in  the  Kieff  case  (Karaouloff, 
Shebalin,  Pankratoff,  Martinoff).  Dur- 
ing the  following  two  years  only  a  few 
were  added.  Ignatius  Ivanoff  was 
brought  from  the  Kasan  House  for  In- 
sane, Manachuroff  from  Odessa,  La- 
govsky  and  Yanovitch  and  Varinsky, 
participants  in  the  case  of  "Proletar- 
iat ' '  from  Warsaw.  In  1887  a  new  ar- 
ray of  victims,  participants  of  the  last 
famous  trials  of  the  Narodnaia  Volia, 
were  brought  in,  some  of  them  for  the 
purpose  of  execution.  Thus,  five  of  the 
seven  "First  March  Men"— Ulianoff, 
Generaloff,  Osiparoff,  Andreiushkin 
and  Shevareff— were  hanged  a  few 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  31 

days  after  their  arrival.    Novorouski 
and  Lukashevitch  remained  in  the  fort- 
ress to  serve  their  sentence.    They  were 
charged  with  the  attempt  upon  the  life 
of  Alexander  III.   in    March,   1887. 
Nearly  all  of  them  were  students  of 
Cossack  families.    Then  came  Herman 
Alexandrowitch  Lopatin  and  his  com- 
rades,   Starodvorsky,    Konashewitch, 
Sergius  Ivanoff  and  finally  Borris  Or- 
gik.    Lopatin  and  Orgik  were  the  last 
organizers  of   the    Narodnaia   Volia, 
who  fell  in  their  attempt  to  reorganize 
and  re-establish  their  party.     From 
1887    on   political    trials   in    Russia 
ceased,    the    government    preferring 
"administrative  order"  to  a  trial  and 
from  that  year  up  to  the  closing  days 
of  the  Bastille,  for  the  period  of  sev- 
enteen   years,  only    eleven  men    and 
women  were  added  to  the  list  of  ' '  dan- 
gerous ' '    ( Sophi  e     Ginzburg,   Karpo- 
witch,    Balmashoff,    Katchura,    Ger- 
shuni,  Melnikoff,  Sasonoff,  Sikorsky, 


32  THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

Hershkowitch,  Wasilieff  and  Kalia- 
ieff).  Thus  for  the  twenty-one  years 
of  its  existence  prior  to  October,  1905, 
the  Bastille  had  kept  sixty-seven  men 
and  women.  The  amnesty,  however, 
found  in  the  Bastille  only  thirteen  out 
of  the  sixty-seven  originally  impris- 
oned (Popoff,  Frolenko,  Morosoff,  No- 
vorousky,  Loukashewitch,  Lopatin, 
Ivanoff,  Antonoff,  Karpowitch,  Ger- 
shuni,  Melnikoff,  Sasonoff  and  Sikors- 
ky). The  fourteenth,  Starodworsky, 
was  transferred  to  St.  Paul  and  St. 
Peter  Fortress  in  September,  1905. 

During  these  years  only  thirteen 
men  and  women  left  Schlusselburg. 
The  fate  of  the  rest  of  the  thirty-seven 
is  most  tragic.  Thirteen  were  shot  or 
hanged  within  the  walls  of  the  pris- 
on.1 Four  committed  suicide  in  jail.* 

1  Mishkin,   Minakoff,    Ulianoff,   Generaloff,    Osi- 
panoff,    Andreiushkin,    Shevaleff,    S'tromberg,    Ro- 
gatcheff,  Ualmashoff,  Hershkowitch,  Wasilieff  and 
Kaliaieff. 

2  Klimenko,     Tikhanowitch,     Grachef sky     and 
Sophie  Ginzburg. 


THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE  33 

Three  committed  suicide  after  libera- 
tion.9 Fifteen  died  of  consumption, 
insanity  and  other  diseases*  Three 
insanes  were  allowed  to  leave  the  Bas- 
tille.5 One  of  them  subsequently  died 
in  a  hospital  in  St.  Petersburg  and  two 
are  still  hopeless  inmates  in  the  Kasan 
House  for  Insane. 


'Martinoff,   Yanowitch    and   Polivanoff. 

4  Netehaieff ,    Isaieff,    Arontchik,    Bogdanowitch, 
Slatopolsky,  Malavsky,  Buzinsky,  Buchevitch,  Ko- 
biliansky,  Gellis,  Dolgushin,  Jurkowsky,  Ignatius 
Ivanoif,  Nemolosky,  Ludwig  Varinsky. 

5  Stchedrin,  Konashewitch  and  PokhitonoflF. 


IV 

All  inmates  of  the  Bastille  began 
their  career  as  peaceful  propagandists, 

and  only  some  of  them  subsequently 
became  terrorists.  Many  of  the  old 
prisoners  belonged  to  the  so-called 
Tchaykovsky  circle,  which  was  organ- 
ized in  the  beginning  of  the  seventies 
of  the  last  century  with  the  object  of 
spreading  the  knowledge  of  popular 
subjects  among  the  factory  laborers 
and  millmen.  Except  Ippolit  Mishkin 
and  Herman  Alexandrowitch  Lopatin, 
whose  biographies  are  given  elsewhere 
below,  the  following  men  and  women 
are  specially  to  be  noted. 

Alexander  Dolgushin  was  the  oldest 
prisoner.  In  1874  he  was  sentenced  to 
ten  years  at  hard  labor  in  Siberia  for 
the  publication  of  three  proclamations. 
He  had  never  taken  part  in  terroristic 

34 


THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE  35 

acts.  On  Ms  way  to  hard  labor  in  Si- 
beria lie  defended  a  comrade  from  an 
attack  made  on  him  by  an  officer  in  the 
Krasnoiarsk  Jail,  and  for  this  inter- 
ference  he  received  fifteen  years  addi- 
tional servitude  without  a  trial.  He 
was  transferred  from  Siberia  to  the 
Sts.  Peter  and  Paul  Fortress  in  1883, 
and  died  in  the  Bastille  in  1886. 

Nicholas  Stchedrin  was  twice  sen- 
tenced to  death,  once  for  organizing 
the  South  Bussian  Labor  Union  in 
1881,  and  once  for  attacking  a  prison 
official,  while  the  latter  was  making  in- 
sulting remarks  to  female  prisoners. 
His  treatment  was  exceedingly  cruel. 
For  many  years  he  was  fastened  to  an 
iron  cart,  which  he  dragged  wherever 
he  went.  In  1886  he  became  insane. 
Up  to  1891  the  authorities  would  not 
admit  that  he  was  insane,  and  they 
even  placed  him  in  a  cell  specially  des- 
ignated for  disorderly  prisoners.  Not 
until  1896  did  they  transfer  him  to  the 


36  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

Kasan  Institution  for  the  Insane. 

Michael  Trigoni  was  a  friend  of  the 
famous  Andrew  Sheliaboff,  who,  to- 
gether with  Sophie  Perovskaia  and 
others,  was  tried  in  1881  for  the  assas- 
sination of  Alexander  II.  Trigoni  pro- 
tected Sheliaboff  against  the  police  for 
some  time  and  kept  him  in  his  house, 
where  both  were  arrested.  After 
twenty  years  of  servitude  Trigoni  was 
deported  to  Saghalien,  where  he  was 
freed  during  the  Japanese  War. 

Nicholas  Morosoff,  who  was  the  ed- 
itor of  the  revolutionary  journal, 
"Land  and  Liberty,"  took  part  in 
several  famous  trials  and  was  known 
as  the  poet  of  the  "Narodnaia  Volia." 
Jointly  with  Alexander  Mikhailoff, 
the  organizer,  and  Andrew  Sheliaboff, 
the  leader,  he  formed  the  most  influen- 
tial circle  in  the  executive  committee 
of  their  party.  While  in  the  Bastille 
he  wrote  a  scientific  research  on  the 
"Astronomical  Interpretation  of  the 


THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE  37 

Apocalypse. "  Including  preliminary 
confinement  lie  served  twenty-seven 
years.  After  his  release  he  published 
a  few  of  his  other  literary  productions. 
When  he  regained  sufficient  strength 
he  made  a  successful  campaign  for  the 
office  of  deputy  to  the  third  Duma  and 
was  elected  in  Yaroslave  province  by 
an  overwhelming  majority.  His  elec- 
tion, however,  was  cancelled  by  the 
government.1 

Michael  Frolenko  began  his  revolu- 
tionary career  as  a  peaceful  propa- 
gandist. He  attended  the  conventions 
in  1879  at  which  the  "Narodnaia 
Volia"  was  finally  inaugurated.  He 
was  a  man  of  unusual  daring  and  be- 
came particularly  known  for  the  suc- 
cessful rescue  from  jail  of  Leo  Deutch. 
He  was  a  member  of  the  Executive 
Committee  of  his  party. 

Peter    Polivanoff,    author    of    the 


1  "Tovaristcb,"  Sept.  26,  Oct.  9,  1907,  No.  331, 
and  N.  Y.  Evening  i'ost,  Nov.  9,  1907. 


38  THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

"Alexeieff  Ravelin"  and  of  an  "open 
letter"  to  Secretary  Muravieff,  served 
twenty-two  years.  He  began  his  activ- 
ity in  the  beginning  of  the  eighties. 
He  soon  discovered  that  most  of  the 
revolutionists  had  been  captured  by 
the  government  and  he  conceived  the 
idea  of  rescuing  them  from  prison.  In 
one  of  such  attempts  he  was  arrested 
and  sentenced  to  death.  His  sentence 
was  commuted  to  life  imprisonment. 
In  jail  he  many  times  attempted  sui- 
cide. After  his  release  he  was  deport- 
ed to  Siberia,  wherefrom  he  escaped  to 
France,  where  he  committed  suicide  in 
1903.  In  a  letter  left  by  him  he  wrote 
that,  having  lo'st  his  health  in  prison, 
he  was  unable  to  continue  the  work  of 
his  younger  days  and  concluded  to  die. 
Yurii  Bogdanowitch,  who  was 
known  as  Koboseff,  was  one  of  the 
shrewdest  conspirators.  In  the  seven- 
ties of  the  last  century  he  joined  the 
crusade  of  the  ' '  peasantists. ' '  In  1881 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  39 

he  organized  an  attempt  on  Alexander 
II.  by  the  way  of  a  mine,  which  he  laid 
from  a  milk  store  in  one  of  the  streets 
in  St.  Petersburg.  He  successfully  as- 
sisted Prince  Peter  Kropotkin  in  the 
escape  from  the  Sts.  Peter  and  Paul 
Fortress.  He  died  insane  in  the  Bas- 
tille, 

Vera  Figner  had  first  taken  part  in 
the  organization  of  the  "Land  and 
Liberty. "  When  the  "Narodnaia 
Volia"  was  established  she  promptly 
joined  it,  was  one  of  the  trusted  exeeiii 
tive  members  and  had  taken  part  in 
many  terroristic  enterprises.  At  one 
time  Figner  was  the  only  executive 
member  of  the  "Narodnaia  Volia"  re- 
maining in  Russia.  Although  she  lost 
all  her  friends  during  the  years  1881- 
1882,  she  continued  her  activity  and 
established  the  first  military  organiza- 
tion in  connection  with  the  "Narod- 
naia  Volia. "  Highly  educated  and 
brave,  she  enlisted  a  few  hundred 


40  THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

army  officers  into  the  organization, 
which  was  the  strongest  of  its  kind 
ever  since  the  plot  of  the  Decembrists 
in  1825.  She  was  arrested  in  1883, 
tried  in  1884  and  sentenced  to  death. 
Her  sentence  was  commuted  to  hard 
labor  in  Schlusselburg.  She  was  re- 
leased in  1904,  but  deported  to  the  City 
of  Archangelsk  in  northern  Eussia. 

Ludmila  A.  Wolkenstein  took  part 
in  the  agitation  of  the  "People's 
Will"  party  and  was  one  of  the  de- 
fendants in  the  Figner  "Military" 
trial.  She  was  arrested  in  1883,  also 
sentenced  to  death,  which  sentence  was 
commuted  to  hard  labor.  She  was  re- 
leased in  1896  and  sent  to  Saghalien. 
She  wrote  her  memoirs  about  the  Bas- 
tille, known  as  "Thirteen  Years  in 
Schlusselburg. ' '  During  the  Japanese 
War  she  was  transferred  to  Vladivos- 
tok where,  in  January,  1906,  she  was 
killed  in  a  street  demonstration  of 
mutineers. 


THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE  41 

The  military  men  who  were  convict- 
ed with  Vera  Figner  were  only  accused 
of  propaganda  in  the  army  and  of 
founding  revolutionary  military  or- 
ganizations. Lieutenant  Baron  Alex- 
ander Stromberg  and  Nicholas  Bogat- 
cheff,  whose  death  sentences  were  not 
commuted,  were  not  the  most  influen- 
tial among  them.  The  government 
made  "examples"  of  them  for  the  rea- 
son that  they  had  been  associating 
with  the  leaders  of  Narodnaia  Volia 
much  oftener  than  others.  Baron 
Stromberg  was  deported  to  Siberia  in 
1881,  and  while  serving  his  term  there 
he  was  brought  back  for  the  Figner 
case,  convicted  and  hanged.  Nicholas 
Bogatcheff  only  intended  to  resign 
from  service  and  then  devote  his  time 
to  the  newly  formed  organization,  but 
was  arrested  before  he  had  tendered 
his  resignation.  The  fact  that  his 
brother,  Dmitri  Eogatcheff,  was  con- 


42  THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

victed  to  hard  labor  in  1878  in  the  case 
of  "193,"  prompted  his  execution. 

Colonel  Ashenbrenner  and  Pokhito- 
noff  were  the  most  brilliant  men  in  the 
military  organization.  Ashenbrenner 
took  leave  of  absence  for  a  long  term 
and  traveled  all  over  Russia,  organiz- 
ing military  circles.  Their  sentence's 
were  commuted  in  view  of  the  splendid 
record  they  made  while  in  actual  serv- 
ice. Pokhitonoff  went  insane  in  the 
Bastille.  Ashenbrenner,  as  well  as  a 
few  of  those  who  survived  the  impris- 
onment, is  now  engaged  in  literary 
pursuit's. 

A  remarkable  feature  in  this  case 
was  the  conduct  of  Officer  Tikhano- 
witch.  On  the  17th  day  of  August, 
1882,  one  Wassily  Ivanoff,  a  student 
and  revolutionist,  escaped  from  the 
Kieff  Prison.  Two  prison  keepers 
were  accused  of  complicity  in  the  es- 
cape, were  tried  and  sentenced  to  hard 
labor.  The  real  accomplice,  however, 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  43 

was  Tikhanowitch,  who,  at  the  time 
of  the  escape,  had  charge  of  the  prison 
guard.  As  soon  as  the  keepers  were 
convicted  Tikhanowitch  announced  his 
part  in  the  escape  and  the  keepers 
were  released.  At  the  trial  he  showed 
evidence  of  mental  derangement,  but 
the  court  refused  to  examine  into  his 
sanity.  He  was  sent  to  the  Bastille, 
where  he  committed  suicide  two  weeks 
after  his  term  began. 

Starodworsky  and  Konashewitch,  of 
the  Lopatin  case,  were  convicted  of 
complicity  in  the  assassination  of  Colo- 
nel of  Gendarmes  Soudeikin.  This  af- 
fair was  noteworthy  in  Russian  his- 
tory. One,  Sergius  Degaieff,  an  army 
officer,  was  arrested  on  a  charge  of 
revolutionary  propaganda  in  the  army. 
Colonel  Soudeikin  visited  hi  min  jail  in 
Odessa  and  by  a  promise  of  immunity 
and  the  assurance  that  if  the  revolu- 
tionists on  one  hand  and  the  reaction- 
ists on  the  other  hand,  should  be  re- 


44  THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

moved,  the  Czar  would  grant  a  con- 
stitution, induced  Degaieff  to  betray 
his  comrades  and  take  up  a  position 
with  the  Secret  Police.  To  conceal  De- 
gaieff ?s  treason  an  escape  from  jail 
had  been  arranged  for  him  and  he  be- 
gan a  wholesale  betrayal.  Hundreds 
of  men  and  women  fell  into  Soudei- 
kin ?s  hands.  Among  them  were  Vera 
Figner,  Baron  Stromberg,  Colonel 
Ashenbrenner  and  more  than  two  hun- 
dred others,  mostly  army  officers.  At 
one  time  Soudeikin  was  in  position  to 
lay  his  hands  on  almost  all  leading 
revolutionists.  The  assurance  of  a 
constitution  held  out  to  Degaieff  was 
only  used  to  deceive  this  weak  man 
into  treason.  Soudeikin,  ambitious 
and  jealous  of  the  men  at  the  Court, 
whose  intrigues  prevented  his  further 
promotion,  planned  to  remove,  with 
the  aid  of  Degaieff,  Count  Tolstoi, 
Count  Strogonoff  and  other  advisers 
of  the  Czar  and  thus  reach  the  position 


THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE  45 

of  Secretary  of  Interior.  To  enhance 
his  own  importance,  a  fictitious  at- 
tempt upon  his  life  had  been  made  by 
Degaieff,  which  act,  at  the  same  time 
purported  to  remove  all  suspicion 
against  Degaieff  among  the  revolu- 
tionists. "When  the  unusual  number 
of  arrests  compelled  the  revolutionists 
to  suspect  treason  in  their  own  ranks, 
and  suspicion  fell  upon  Degaieff,  he 
realized  the  awful  part  he  played  un- 
der Soudeikin's  influence  and  com- 
mand, confessed  to  the  Executive  Com- 
mittee of  the  Revolutionary  party,  of- 
fered to  redress  the  crimes  committed 
by  him  and  demanded  that  the  party 
impose  on  him  such  punishment  as  it 
would  see  fit.  The  verdict  of  the  party 
was  that  Degaieff  give  all  information 
which  he  had  about  the  plans  and  pro- 
jects of  the  Secret  Police,  and  thus 
place  the  suspected  revolutionists  be- 
yond its  reach  and  that  he  do  away 
with  tjie  man  whom  he  had  intrusted 


4:6  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

with  the  names  and  welfare  of  hun- 
dreds of  men  and  women.  It  was  stat- 
ed in  the  manifesto  issued  by  the  par- 
ty on  this  occasion  that  the  circum- 
stances compelled  it  to  use  Degaieff  for 
that  purpose,  and  that  it  was  done 
with  all  reluctance  and  repugnance 
that  attach  to  deals  with  traitors. 
After  Degaieff  shall  have  complied 
with  this  resolution,  his  own  punish- 
ment was  to  be  determined.  Starod- 
worsky  and  Konashewitch  had  been 
directed  to  see  that  Degaieff  carry  out 
this  verdict.  On  the  16th  day  of  De- 
cember, 1883,  Soudeikin  fell  by  their 
hands.  After  that  Degaieff  again  de- 
manded his  punishment  and  begged 
that  if  it  should  be  decreed  that  his 
life  be  taken,  that  he  be  allowed  to 
take  it  himself.  The  verdict,  however, 
was  that  his  name  be  given  to  eternal 
dishonor  and  that  under  a  penalty  of 
death,  he  forever  sever  all  connections 
with  the  movement  on  behalf  of  Bus- 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  47 

sian  freedom.1  Degaieff  complied  with 
the  verdict.  His  whereabouts  are  un- 
known today.  His  family  struck  his 
name  from  its  roll.  Starodworsky 
and  Konashewitch  were  arrested  some 
time  thereafter,  sentenced  to  death 
and  placed  in  the  Bastille,  where  the 
latter  went  insane.  Starodworsky, 
however,  having  gone  through  its  hor- 
rors, was  released  in  1905  to  see  life 
again. 

Antonoff  and  Pankratoff  were  work- 
men engaged  in  propaganda  among 
working  people,  a  crime  most  seriously 
prosecuted  in  the  seventies  and  eigh- 
ties, if  committed  by  one  of  the  "low- 
er" classes.  Both  had  organized  la- 
bor circles  and  enjoyed  great  influ- 
ene.  Upon  his  release  Pankratoff,  who 
had  served  thirteen  years,  published 
his  reminiscences  about  the  Bastille  in 


1  "Messenger  of  the  People's  Will"  (in  Russian), 
No.  2,  1884,  and  "Narodnaia  Volia,"  No.  10,  1884. 
Also  Stepniak  in  London  "Times,"  January,  1884. 


48  THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

a  book  entiled  "Life  in  Schlussel- 
burg. ' '  Antonoff  remained  there  until 
October,  1905. 

Ludwig  Varinsky  was  the  founder 
of  the  Polish  Revolutionary  Party 
"Proletariat."  An  able  speaker  and 
organizer,  he  was  expelled  from  Aus- 
tria after  the  Krakow  Trial  in  1880. 
Having  arrived  in  Warsaw  in  1881, 
he  soon  organized  the  so-called  "Labor 
Committee"  which  led  all  labor  dis- 
putes. He  wrote  the  programme  of  the 
party  and  many  of  its  appeals  and  es- 
tablished its  leading  newspapers.  In 
1883  he  laid  the  foundation  for  the  co- 
operation of  the  "Proletariat"  with 
the  "Narodnaia  Volia,"  which  subse- 
quently resulted  in  unity  of  action  of 
both  parties.  Having  travelled  in  the 
interest  of  his  cause,  he  escaped  arrest 
many  times,  but  finally  fell  into  the 
hands  of  the  police  on  the  28th  day  of 
September,  1883,  after  a  fierce  struggle 


LMi'SHMN 


THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE  49 

with  the  spies,  who  followed  him.    He 
died  in  the  Bastille  in  1889. 

The  fate  of  Michael  Popoff  was  par- 
ticularly tragic.  He  was  a  "peasant- 
ist."  He  was  sentenced  in  1879  and 
sent  to  Siberia,  From  there  he  was 
transferred  to  the  Bastille  with  sixteen 
others,  who  were  charged  with  an  at- 
tempted escape,  in  which  he  took  no 
part.  He  survived  all  his  comrades 
and  served  the  longest  term. 


The  younger  prisoners,  most  of 
whom  belonged  to  the  Eevolutionary 
Socialists,  were  terrorists,  although 
they  too  began  their  career  as  peaceful 
propagandists  and  educators. 

The  terrorism  of  these  men  originat- 
ed under  circumstances  different  from 
those  which  brought  about  the  tactics 
of  the  Narodnaia  Volia.  "While  that 
party  adopted  this  weapon  as  a  means 
of  self  defense  and  attack  during  a 
time  when  the  movement  was  purely 
intellectual  and  had  no  footing  among 
the  masses,  terrorism  of  the  Eevolu- 
tionary Socialists  sprang  up  at  a  time 
when  the  government  inaugurated  a 
system  of  white  terror  for  the  purpose 
of  crushing  the  movements  then 
spreading  among  the  workmen  and 
peasants.  It  coincided  with  the 

50 


THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE  51 

growth  of  the  Social  Democratic  agi- 
tation in  the  cities  and  Social  Bevolu- 
tionary  propaganda  in  the  villages. 
Secretaries  Sipiagin,  Von  Plehve,  Gen- 
eral Bogdanowitch,  Grand  Duke  Ser- 
gius  and  others  all  fell  victims  of  the 
system  of  the  massacre  of  non-ortho- 
dox nationalities  and  wholesale  flog- 
ging, deportation  and  execution  of 
workmen,  peasants  and  intellectuals 
inaugurated  by  them. 

Peter  Karpowitch,  a  student  of  the 
Moscow  University,  was  an  ardent  or- 
ganizer of  educational  circles  and  so- 
cieties for  self-support,  widely  known 
as ' '  Countrymen 's  Organizations. ' '  In 
this  activity  he  soon  met  with  persecu- 
tion. For  participation  in  the  memor- 
ial services  over  the  victims  of  the  so- 
called  "Khodin  Affair,"1  he  was  ar- 


1  It  is  an  accident  which  occurred  on  the  Khodin 
Place  in  Moscow  during  the  coronation  of  Nich- 
olas II.,  wherein  a  few  thousands  were  killed  and 
maimed  as  a  result  of  a  collapse  of  one  of  the 
structures  during  the  festivities. 


52  THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

rested  and  expelled  from  the  Univer- 
sity. There  have  been  more  than  eight 
hundred  students  expelled  for  this  of- 
fense. He  subsequently  joined  the 
Dorpalt  University,  from  which  he  was 
again  expelled,  in  1889,  for  taking  part 
in  a  student  meeting.  He  then  went 
to  Switzerland,  whence  he  returned  to 
Russia  in  1901/  a  full  fledged  revolu- 
tionist. At  this  time  Secretary  Bog- 
olepoff,  who  was  responsible  for  meas- 
ures of  persecution  against  students, 
adopted  a  new  regulation  by  which 
students  had  been  thrown  into  invol- 
untary soldiery  for  any  complaint  that 
may  have  been  made  against  them  by 
the  ordinary  or  university  police  and 
one  hundred  and  eighty-six  students 
in  Kieff  were  at  once  subjected  to  such 
punishment.  At  the  trial  for  killing 
the  Secretary,  Karpowitch  said: 

"I  was  a  student.  Our  aims  and  en- 
deavors were  legitimate.  I  was  ac- 
quainted with  the  life  of  the  soldiers 


THE  RUSSAIN  BASTILLE  53 

and  realized  what  horrors  would  be- 
fall the  young  students  in  the  disci- 
plinary regiments.  I  knew  that  many 
could  not  adapt  themselves  to  the  dis- 
cipline in  vogue  and  I  decided  to  pro- 
test, but  how?  The  press  was  muzzled 
and  then  it  would  be  useless  and  I  de- 
cided to  shoot  at  Bogolepoff.  I  had  no 
intention  to  kill.  My  object  was  to  di- 
rect public  attention  to  the  unjust  and 
cruel  treatment  of  the  studying 
youth. ' '  He  was  sentenced  to  twenty 
years  at  hard  labor.  He  took  no  ap- 
peal from  the  verdict,  although  ad- 
vised to  do  so.  He  was  sent  to  Schlus- 
selburg.1  In  1905  Karpo witch  was 
transferred  to  a  Siberian  hard  labor 
prison  in  Akatoui,  from  which  he  es- 
caped in  1906. 

Stephen  Balmashoff  was  born  of  ex- 
iled parents  in  1881  in  one  of  the 
northern  provinces,  where  his  father 


1  Messenger  of  the  Russian  Revolution  (in  Rus- 
sian), July,  1901,  No.  1,  Paris. 


54  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

was  serving  a  term  of  deportation. 
While  a  child  young  Stephen  saw  mis- 
ery and  injustice  and  witnessed  night 
raids  upon  his  father's  house  made  by 
the  Secret  Police.  When  they  were 
allowed  to  return  to  Saratoff  and 
Stephen  was  about  to  enter  a  public 
school  or  a  gymnasium,  an  objection 
was  made  to  his  admission,  on  the 
ground  that  his  father  was  politically 
unreliable.  He  was  finally  admitted 
only  upon  the  urgent  request  of  influ- 
ential friends. 

In  school  young  Balmashoff  devel- 
oped a  passion  for  reading.  In  the 
higher  classes  he  edited  a  magazine,  in 
which  he  popularized  the  views  of  well 
known  writers.  The  raids  upon  his 
father's  house  continued,  however, 
even  in  Saratoff  when  Stephen  was  a 
youth  of  eighteen.  In  1899  he  entered 
the  Kasan  University.  Here  he  organ- 
ized educational  circles,  published  a 
students'  magazine  and  lectured  to 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  55 

workmen  during  evenings.  In  1900  he 
sought  and  obtained  a  transfer  to  the 
Kieff  University,  where  he  was  imme- 
diately elected  a  representative  of  the 
Volga  Circle  to  the  United  Council  of 
Students '  Organizations. 

When  in  1900  two  students  were  ar- 
rested for  speaking  at  public  meetings, 
a  protest  demonstration  had  taken 
place  at  a  railroad  station.  A  few 
hundred  students  were  arrested  for  it 
and  one  hundred  and  eighty-six  of 
them  thrown  into  soldiery,  Balmashoff 
among  them.  He  escaped,  was  subse- 
quently arrested  and  thrown  into  jail, 
wherefrom  he  published  a  magazine 
known  as  "From  the  Dungeon. "  He 
was  at  last  taken  into  the  disciplinary 
battalion.  During  these  days  Balma- 
shoff  fostered  the  view  that,  unless 
the  political  conditions  are  changed, 
students,  like  other  classes,  would  suf- 
fer and  that  such  a  change  could  be 
brought  about  only  by  a  movement  of 


56  THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

the  masses.  For  this  reason,  as  soon 
as  he  managed  to  obtain  his  release 
from  the  regiment,  he  again  gave  his 
energy  to  the  organization  of  the 
workmen  in  the  cities. 

The  students'  movement  had,  how- 
ever, continued  and  in  1901  demonstra- 
tions had  taken  place  in  all  principal 
cities.  The  whipping  of  the  students 
by  the  Cossacks  in  the  streets  of  St. 
Petersburg,  had  aroused  general  indig- 
nation and  the  Union  of  Writers  in  St. 
Petersburg  protested  to  Secretary  Sip- 
iagin  against  the  unwarranted  be- 
havior of  the  authoroities.1  At  about 
this  time  the  latter  issued  his  famous 
order  forbidding  private  charity 
among  the  famine  stricken  peasants 
upon  the  ground  "that  it  might  lead 
to  public  initiative,  which  is  contrary 
to  our  laws"  and  subsequently  direct- 


1  The  "Union  of  Writers"  was  subsequently  dis- 
solved by  kipiagin  and  more  than  1,200  intel- 
lectuals expelled  from  St.  Petersburg,  Peter  Struve 
and  Roditcheff  among  them. 


THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE  57 

ed  the  open  shooting  of  inoffensive 
striking  workmen  in  Batnm  and  Eka- 
terinoslav.  When  new  demonstrations 
were  planned  and  Sipiagin  announced 
that  he  would  ' '  drown  St.  Petersburg 
in  blood  and  would  make  the  writers 
forget  how  to  think  if  they  dared  to 
protest  again"  and  threatened  an  all- 
Eussian  massacre  of  the  intellectuals, 
the  Fighting  League,  then  a  young  or- 
ganization, sentenced  Sipiagin  to 
death.  Balmashoff,  who  was  the 
youngest  member  of  the  League,  as- 
pired to  the  inevitable  martyrdom  in 
this  affair.  It  is  well  known  how  Bal- 
mashoff, dressed  like  a  lieutenant, 
carried  out  the  verdict  of  the  League 
on  the  2d  day  of  April,  1902,  in  the 
office  of  the  Council  of  Ministers.  At 
the  trial  he  displayed  an  iron  charac- 
ter. When  asked  about  his  motives  he 
said : 

"Ask  all  Eussian  citizens  why  they 
have  not  killed  Sipiagin  long  before  I 


58  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

did.  Why  I  have  done  it  should  be 
clear  to  all." 

When  asked  about  his  accomplices 
he  said: 

' '  They  are  the  Eussian  Government 
with  the  Czar  at  the  head  and  I  de- 
mand that  my  accomplices  be  tried 
here  with  me." 

He  was  sentenced  to  death.  On  the 
same  day  his  mother  appealed  to  the 
Czar  for  clemency.  Nicholas  II.  said 
that  he  would  exercise  clemency  if  the 
petition  would  be  signed  by  Balma- 
shoff personally.  Durnovo,  then  As- 
sistant Secretary  of  Interior,  went  to 
Balmashoff  and  endeavored  to  induce 
him  to  sign  the  petition.  When  Dur- 
novo returned  he  said  to  his  mother: 
"Your  son  is  a  stone."  Before  execu- 
tion Balmashoff  wrote  to  his  parents: 

"Do  not  crush  me  with  the  burden 
of  your  reproach.  The  cruel  and  re- 
lentless conditions  of  Eussian  life  com- 
pelled me  to  shed  human  blood,  and 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  59 

are  responsible  for  your  undeserved 
suffering.  How  happy  would  I  be  if 
I  would  not  have  the  thought  of  your 
grief!  But  though  the  satisfaction 
caused  by  the  consciousness  of  a  ful- 
filled duty  is  saddened  by  this  thought, 
I  do  not  regret  the  deed.  You  have 
long  ago  realized  the  importance  of 
the  struggle  with  the  most  pronounced 
and  dangerous  representatives  of  the 
autocratic  regime  and  that  inevitable 
are  sacrifices  in  this  war.  But  the  con- 
ditions now  prevailing  in  our  unfortu- 
nate fatherland  not  only  demand  ma- 
terial sacrifices,  they  make  it  impera- 
tive for  parents  to  give  up  their  chil- 
dren. I  bring  nay  life  as  a  sacrifice  to 
the  great  cause  of  the  oppressed  and 
the  persecuted  and  this  I  hope  gives 
me  the  moral  justification  for  the  cru- 
elty which  I  heaped  on  you,  my  dear- 
est. 


1  S.  V.  Balmashofi,  biographie,  in  Russian,  1903. 
Switzerland. 


60  THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

"Let  this  interpretation  of  my  deed 
appease  your  grief,  and  I  ask  you  to 
do  one  thing,  though  I  know  how  hard 
it  is  for  you  to  comply  with  the  re- 
quest: Whatever  may  happen  to  me, 
please  be  as  cool  and  as  firm  as  I  am. 
Perhaps  your  coolness  will  reach  me 
through  the  thick  prison  walls  and 
will  lessen  my  anxiety  for  you."  He 
was  twenty-one  when  executed  in  the 
Bastille. 

Gregory  Gershuni  was  born  in  1869. 
He  was  one  of  the  most  conspicuous 
figures  in  the  revolutionary  movement 
of  the  recent  days.  He  enjoyed  all 
opportunities  which  means  and  ed- 
ucation could  offer.  He  was  a 
chemist  by  profession.  His  first 
activity  covered  a  few  years  in  the  city 
of  Minsk,  where  he  established  schools 
for  the  poor  and  participated  in  char- 
itable institutions.  "But,"  he  said  to 
the  Court  during  his  trial, '  *  as  soon  as 
our  educational  activity  spread  and 


THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE  61 

we  learned  the  conditions  of  the 
masses;  owing  to  the  political  regime, 
we  have  come  to  realize  that  we  could 
not  do  much  for  them,  and  that  the 
most  serious  obstacle  in  our  way  was 
the  opposition  of  the  government  to 
every  legitimate  enterprise.  The  pov- 
erty of  the  workmen  and  the  peasants, 
the  persecution  of  the  Jews  and  other 
nationalities,  the  prohibition  of  free 
speech,  free  press,  and  of  the  right  to 
petition  or  protest,  the  flogging  of  the 
peasants  and  the  shooting  of  the  work- 
men, had  soon  aroused  my  shame  and 
my  conscience,  and  I  joined  the  ranks 
of  those  who  made  common  welfare 
their  only  motive. ' ' 

But  even  in  the  ranks  of  the  revolu- 
tionary party  Gershuni  at  first  devot- 
ed most  of  his  time  to  the  education 
and  organization  of  the  masses,  believ- 
ing that  only  on  those  principles  a 
movement  that  intends  to  change  the 
system  in  vogue  could  be  successful. 


62  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

At  this  time  one  Soubatoff,  Chief  of 
Gendarmes  in  Moscow,  conceived  the 
idea  to  use  the  spreading  labor  move- 
ment for  the  purpose  of  strengthening 
the  autocracy.  His  plan  was  to  per- 
mit some  betterments  in  their  condi- 
tions, attract  the  intellectuals  to  such 
a  movement  and  thus  weaken  and  de- 
moralize the  revolutionary  ranks. 

In  1900  Gershuni  was  arrested  in 
Kieff .  He  was  taken  to  Moscow,  where 
Soubatoff,  by  various  means,  endeav- 
ored to  induce  him  to  follow  the  meth- 
ods adopted  by  the  gendarmes  in  the 
newly  formed  labor  circles.  Gerschuni 
was  offered  freedom  and  permission 
to  lecture  among  the  workmen  on  eco- 
nomics, if  he  should  promise  not  to 
discuss  politics.  This  incident  once 
more  convinced  him  of  the  hypocrisy 
of  the  government  and  its  officials,  and 
that  their  only  object  was  to  remain 
in  power  as  long  as  it  was  possible. 
His  arrest,  however,  did  not  last  long. 


THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE  63 

The  Fighting  League  came  soon  into 
existence  and  Gershuni  became  its 
leading  spirit.  The  object  of  this  or- 
ganization is  well  known.  It  was  to 
punish  the  officials  for  the  brutalities 
heaped  upon  the  people  and  deter  and 
prevent  the  repetition  of  such  occur- 
rences. On  the  2d  day  of  April,  1902, 
Secretary  Sipiagin  was  shot.  On  the 
29th  day  of  July  of  the  same  year, 
Thomas  Katchur  shot  at  Prince  Obo- 
lensky,  Governor  of  Kharkoff,  who 
flogged  peasants  to  death  during  a 
famine  strike  and  who  had  given  over 
the  wives  and  the  daughters  of  the 
peasants  to  the  Cossacks  after  the  flog- 
ging. On  the  13th  day  of  March,  1903, 
Governor  of  Ufa  Bogdanowitch,  who 
ordered  soldiers  to  shoot  into  a  crowd 
of  workmen  who  came  to  petition  him, 
was  killed.  The  government  was  bent 
upon  capturing  the  leaders  and  mem- 
bers of  the  League.  Owing  to  a  state- 
ment which  Katchur,  while  in  a  state 


64  THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

of  mental  derangement,  made  to  the 
police,  Gtershuni  was  again  arrested 
in  1903.  Chained  hand  and  foot,  he 
was  taken  to  St.  Petersburg.  Such  a 
proceeding  before  trial  was  extraordi- 
nary even  in  Russia.  During  three 
years  which  passed  after  his  first  ar- 
rest, he  covered  many  cities,  visited 
Europe  a  few  times,  contributed  to  the 
legitimate  and  illegitimate  press  on 
politics  and  economics,  and  wrote 
poetry. 

The  accusation  against  him  was  that 
he  led  and  conducted  the  acts  com- 
mitted by  the  members  of  the  Fighting 
League.  In  February,  1904,  he  was 
brought  to  trial.  The  eyes  of  all  Rus- 
sia turned  to  this  case.  The  honor  of 
the  revolutionary  movement  was  to  be 
upheld.  Gershuni  did  justice  to  his 
cause.  The  trial  marked  an  epoch  in 
the  history  of  the  Revolution.  The 
days  of  the  "Narodania  Volia"  were 
recalled.  Grershuni  refused  to  give 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  65 

testimony  or  call  witnesses  on  his 
behalf.  He  said:  "We  are  de- 
prived of  an  opportunity  to  prove 
our  case;  our  witnesses  will  be 
condemned  as  accomplices.  The  sen- 
tence of  the  Court  is  known  before- 
hand. Its  session  is  an  unnecessary 
formality.  You  have  the  power  and 
yours  shall  be  the  triumph  now,  and  I 
speak  here  only  because  I  want  you  to 
know  the  conditions  which,  in  spite  of 
the  gallows  and  hard  labor,  force  hon- 
est men  and  women  into  the  revolu- 
tionary ranks.  The  problem  of  the 
party  is  to  prepare  Eussia  for  the  con- 
vocation of  the  Semsky  Sobor,  which 
should  act  as  a  constitutional  assem- 
bly, and  to  that  end  we  are  educating, 
organizing,  demonstrating  and  taking 
part  in  all  protests.  But  the  feeling 
of  indignation  and  the  thirst  to  punish 
the  cruelties  heaped  on  us,  caused  ter- 
ror, and  terror  will  follow  whenever  it 
will  be  provoked,  whether  our  party 


66  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

wants  it  or  not.  For  the  party  terror 
is  not  a  means  by  which  it  expects  to 
change  the  system.  It  is  not  invoked 
for  love  of  violence.  It  is  used  in  self 
defense  and  as  a  deterring  method, 
with  all  the  reluctance  and  opposition 
to  violence,  which  civilized  men  and 
women  must  entertain.  I  know  what 
awaits  me  here.  My  road  is  to  the  gal- 
lows. I  knew  it  in  Kieff,  when  your 
lackeys  chained  me  hand  and  foot. 
Nine  months  have  passed.  The  time 
has  come!  Finish  your  work !  But  if 
you  think  that  your  proceedings  will 
remain  secret,  you  are  in  error.  The 
death  knell  for  me  will  be  a  signal  for 
renewed  activity  in  behalf  of  liberty! 
Our  people  will  learn  at  what  cost  your 
government  exists  and  will  realize  that 
during  such  days  it  is  a  crime  to  sit 
and  look  on.  I  know  that  it  is 
unpleasant  for  you  to  listen  to  me, 
but  if  you  have  the  courage  to  hang 
a  man  for  his  convictions,  then  have 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  67 

the  bravery  to  listen  to  Mm  before  you 
hang  him. ' 9 

Grershuni  was  sentenced  to  death. 
The  sentence  was  commuted  to  confine- 
ment in  the  Schlusselburg  Fortress  for 
life.  Before  he  was  taken  there  Plehve 
visited  him  and  endeavored  to  engage 
him  in  a  conversation.  The  object  was 
to  induce  him  to  petition  the  Czar  for 
clemency.  Grershuni  refused  to  speak 
to  Plehve.  When  the  decision  on  the 
commutation  of  sentence  was  brought 
to  him  by  the  presiding  judge,  Ger- 
shuni  exclaimed,  "I  did  not  ask  for 
it."  Before  he  knew  of  the  change  of 
sentence  he  wrote  to  his  friends  apolo- 
gizing for  his  refusal  to  escape,  before 
the  anticipated  arrest  as  they  had 
urged  him  to  do. 

"I  had  to  remain  in  Russia.  You 
know  that  I  always  opposed  desertion 
of  the  battlefield.  I  know  that  my  exe- 
cution will  be  a  hard  blow  to  you,  but 


68  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

it  will  serve  our  cause.  It  was  hard 
for  the  revolutionists  of  the  seventies 
and  eighties  to  die,  They  were  alone. 
We  are  surrounded  by  a  struggling 
people.  "We  breathe  with  them  and  it 
is  so  easy  to  die!  You,  however,  unite 
and  continue  the  struggle."1 

Having  remained  in  the  Bastille  for 
over  a  year  Gershuni  was  released  in 
October,  1905,  and  deported  to  the 
hard  labor  prison  in  Akatoui  in  Si- 
beria, wherefrom  he  escaped  in  1906, 
and  safely  reached  the  United  States. 

Here  Gershuni  aroused  great  inter- 
est in  the  cause  of  Bussian  Freedom. 
An  exposal  of  the  methods  of  the  Eus- 
sian Government  made  by  him  almost 
resulted  in  a  serious  financial  embar- 
rassment for  that  government,  and  im- 
mediately thereafter  an  inquiry  was 
made  from  Washington  as  to  the  na- 
ture of  Gershuni 's  career  and  agita- 


1  Revolutionary   Russia   and   Emancipation    (in 
Russian),  1904. 


THE  EUSSIAN   BASTILLE  69 

tion.  Only  a  strong  and  proper  ex- 
planation of  his  activity  prevented  him 
from  being  expelled  from  the  United 
States,  an  expulsion  sought  by  the 
Russian  Government. 

In  the  beginning  of  1907,  Grershuni 
disappeared  from  the  United  States. 
True  to  the  "call  of  his  army"  as  said 
by  him  in  one  of  his  speeches,  he  went 
back  to  Russia.  There,  under  circum- 
stances most  unspeakable,  he  began 
the  hard  task  of  uniting  the  scattered 
forces  of  the  Revolution,  and  on  one 
of  his  skirmishes  was  arrested.  He 
convinced  the  gendarmes,  who  failed 
to  recognize  him,  that  he  was  a  peace- 
ful citizen,  and  was  freed. 

But  the  imprisonment  in  Schlussel- 
berg  and  Akatoui,  constant  exposure 
and  travelling,  improper  food  and 
strained  life  began  to  tell.  Having 
contracted  a  pulmonary  disease  while 
in  prison,  he  failed  to  take  care  of  his 
health  after  liberation.  On  his  last 


70  THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

trip  to  Eussia  lie  broke  down  and  his 
friends  compelled  him  to  go  to  Switzer- 
land for  a  rest.  On  the  18th  day  of 
March,  1908,  he  died  in  Zurich,  leav- 
ing thousands  of  friends  and  admirers, 
in  the  old  and  new  worlds,  mourning  a 
loss  long  not  to  be  replaced. 

In  his  last  letter  to  his  American 
friends  Gershuni  wrote:  "Do  not  lose 
courage  and  do  not  despair  at  the  con- 
ditions in  Russia.  I  tell  you:  have  pa- 
tience! Had  you  only  known  what  is 
going  on  in  the  heart  of  the  people's 
soul !  "What  a  change  had  taken  place 
in  the  people's  views  and  attitudes! 
There  Stolypin  is  powerless  and  the 
Revolution  sings  its  triumphant  song. ' ' 

He  was  buried  in  Paris,  escorted  to 
his  grave  by  representatives  of  all  rev- 
olutionary parties  of  Russia  and  many 


NOTE — The  biography  of  Gregory  Gershuni  has 
been  revised  by  the  author  before  it  went  to  press, 
and  added  new  facts,  which  could  not  be  published, 
if  he  were  alive. 


THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE  71 

representatives  of  modern  thought  in 
Europe. 

Egor  Sasonoff,  a  student,  was  twice 
exiled  to  Siberia  on  a  mere  suspicion. 
When  he  returned  he  joined  the  Fight- 
ing League.  He  was  one  of  the  five 
members  of  the  League  who  had  un- 
dertaken to  assassinate  Plehve.  In  the 
disguise  of  a  cabman  he  followed 
Plehve  for  three  months  and  finally 
carried  out  the  verdict  of  the  League 
on  July  27,  1903.  The  unmistak- 
able widespread  rejoicing  caused  by 
Plehve 's  death  resulted  in  the  commu- 
tation of  the  death  sentence  imposed 
upon  Sasonoff  by  the  Court,  to  a  term 
at  hard  labor  for  the  limited  period  of 
eighteen  years.  He  served  in  the  Bas- 
tille until  October,  1905,  and  he  is  now 
in  the  Akatoui  Prison  in  Siberia. 

Ivan  Kaliaieff  was  born  in  1877  in 
Warsaw.  His  father  was  a  police  ser- 
geant. He  was  a  pupil  in  the  Warsaw 
Gymnasium,  where  he  studied  under 


72  THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

a  regime  particularly  cruel  in  Poland. 
In  his  young  days  lie  had  already  con- 
tributed to  Russian  and  Polish  maga- 
zines. He  studied  history  in  the  Uni- 
versity at  Moscow  and  in  1898  entered 
the  law  school  in  St.  Petersburg.  In 
1899  he  served  three  months  in  jail  for 
a  student  affair  and  was  exiled  for  two 
years.  In  1902  he  was  arrested  again 
for  carrying  a  few  forbidden  pam- 
phlets published  for  workmen  by  the 
Social  Democrat  Organization  and  was 
thrown  into  the  "Warsaw  Citadel.  This 
arrest  changed  Kaliaieff's  policy.  In 
1903  we  find  him  abroad  and  at  the  dis- 
posal of  the  Revolutionary  Party.  He 
was  a  member  of  the  Fighting  League. 
A  man  of  unusual  education  and  abil- 
ity, a  poet  and  a  speaker,  he  showed 
great  caution  at  the  time  he  carried 
out  the  sentence  of  the  Fighting 
League  against  the  Grand  Duke  Ser- 
gius.  He  twice  met  the  Duke  with  his 
wife  in  streets  wherefrom  he  could 


Three  of  this  group  were  not  in  Sclusselburg.  Blinoff  was  killed  in  the 
Zhitomir  massacre.  Sidortchuk  was  sentenced  to  death,  but  imprisoned  at 
hard  labor  in  the  Akatoni  jail,  in  Siberia.  Breshkovsky  served  four  years  in 
Sts.  Peter  and  Paul  Fortress  before  she  was  sentenced  in  1879. 


THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE  73 

have  easily  escaped,  but  he  refrained 
from  throwing  his  bomb.  The  Grand 
Duchess  was  not  to  suffer  for  her 
reactionary  husband.  It  was  for 
this  reason  that  the  Grand  Duch- 
ess visited  him  in  jail  after  her 
husband,  who  was  the  leading  member 
of  the  Court  Camarille,  was  killed.  At 
the  trial  Kaliaieff  recited  the  history 
of  Russia  during  the  days  previous  to 
the  establishment  of  the  Fighting 
League  and  stated  that  the  acts  of  the 
League  are  a  warning  to  autocracy. 
When  the  death  sentence  was  pro- 
nounced, Kaliaieff  said  to  the  Judges: 
"I  am  happy  to  receive  your  verdict, 
and  only  hope  that  you  will  have  the 
courage  to  carry  it  out  as  publicly  as 
I  have  carried  out  the  verdict  of  the 
Revolutionary  Party.  Learn  to  face 
the  Russian  Revolution ! ' '  He  took  an 
oath  from  his  mother  not  to  seek  clem- 
ency. When,  however,  she  informed 
him  that  his  sentence  might  be  com- 


74  THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

muted  without  a  petition,  he  immedi- 
ately wrote  to  the  Secretary  of  Jus- 
tice: "True  to  the  testament  of  the 
Narodnaia  Volia,  I  notify  you  that  I 
consider  it  my  duty  to  reject  clem- 
ency." 

Zinaida  Konopliannikova  was  a 
school  teacher  among  peasants  and 
knew  the  conditions  from  personal 
observation.  In  December,  1905, 
Colonel  Min  was  sent  to  Moscow  to 
crush  the  uprising  which  then  had 
taken  place  there.  He  was  the  com- 
mander of  the  Semonovsky  Begiment, 
which  was  brought  from  St.  Peters- 
burg because  the  Moscow  Garrison  re-- 
fused to  obey  orders.  The  soldiers 
were  wrought  up  to  a  frenzy  by  drink, 
and  only  while  in  this  condition  could 
be  induced  to  do>  their  deadly  work. 

Even  after  the  rebellion  subsided  a 
few  hundred  men  and  women  were 


A  Ivan  Platonowitch  Kaliaieff,  biographie  (in 
Russian),  1905.  "Daily  Telegraph,"  May  11-24, 
1905,  cited  therein. 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  75 

slaughtered  without  regard  of  their 
guilt  or  innocence.  For  this  work  Col- 
onel Min  was  promoted  to  the  rank  of 
general.  He  was,  however,  completely 
ostracised  by  society.  The  Fighting 
League  sentenced  him  to  death  and 
Konopliannikova  executed  the  sen- 
tence in  September,  1906.  She  met 
the  general  at  a  railroad  station  near 
St.  Petersburg.  He  was  there  with  his 
wife.  Konopliannikova,  therefore,  did 
not  throw  her  bomb  at  the  general  but 
shot  him,  not  wishing  to  harm  the  in- 
nocent. The  general  was  killed 
but  his  wife  was  not  injured. 
At  her  trial  she  said  that  all,  guilty 
of  atrocities  against  her  people,  will 
sooner  or  later  find  their  death  at 
the  hands  of  the  revolutionists  for 
that  all  tyrants  had  forfeited  their 
lives.  She  was  sentenced  to  death  and 
executed  in  the  Bastille  in  September, 
1906.  This  execution  opens  a  new 
gloomy  chapter  in  the  history  of  the 


76  THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

Bastille,  winch  has  again  been  re- 
stored after  an  enforced  disuse  which 
only  lasted  about  ten  months.  Short- 
ly thereafter  the  cells  of  the  Bastille 
opened  for  the  sailors  and  marines  of 
the  Kronstadt  and  Sveaborg  rebellion, 
which  broke  out  immediately  after  the 
dissolution  of  the  first  Duma.  Among 
these  new  inmates  we  find  Social  Dem- 
ocrats as  well  as  Social  Revolutionists. 
Thus  the  Fortress  numbers  among  its 
prisoners  men  and  women  of  all  par- 
ties and  phases  in  the  history  of  the 
revolutionary  movement,  including  the 
sailors  and  marines — these  true  sons 
of  the  revolution  of  the  later  days. 


VI 

The  regime  in  prison  during  the 
eighties,  when  at  the  head  of  the  Rus- 
sian Gendarmery  stood  men  like  She- 
becco,  Orjevsky  and  Plehve,  may  be 
characterized  as  most  atrocious.  So- 
koloff,  the  brutal  warden  of  the  Alex- 
eieff  Ravelin,  was  placed  in  command 
of  the  new  prison.  He  was  an  ignor- 
ant, cruel  soldier,  and  always  ready, 
he  said, ' '  to  kill  his  parents,  if  ordered 
by  superiors."  Lopatin  named  him 
"Herod."  All  communications  be- 
tween the  prisoners,  by  knocking  on 
the  walls,  singing,  whistling,  rapid 
walking,  as  well  as  interviews  with  rel- 
atives or  friends,  were  forbidden.  The 
enforced  and  continued  silence,  inac- 
tivity and  isolation  were  maddening. 
The  restriction  of  correspondence 
with  relations  and  the  prohibition  to 
visit  the  prisoners,  cut  off  the  Bas- 

77 


78  THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

tille  from  all  life.  Novorouski  relates 
that  at  times  the  prisoners  forgot  ordi- 
nary words  of  the  Bussian  language. 
For  violation  of  the  rules  disobedient 
prisoners  were  beaten,  bound  and  in- 
carcerated in  dark  cells  and  deprived 
of  their  daily  promenade  and  of  their 
meals.  The  meals  were  worse  than 
those  dispensed  in  the  Bussian  army. 
Foul  food  was  given  even  to  sick  pris- 
oners. And  only  when,  as  a  result  of 
such  diet,  almost  all  prisoners  became 
sick  and  there  was  fear  that  they  all 
might  perish;  those  who  were  dan- 
gerously ill  were  allowed  a  small  por- 
tion of  milk  and  given  more  time  for 
promenade.  But  as  soon  as  a  prisoner's 
health  improved  the  milk  would  dis- 
appear. Few  books,  except  the  New 
Testament  were  allowed.  There  was 
no  hospital  attached  to  the  jail.  The 
iron  bed  in  each  cell  was  closed  early 
in  the  morning,  and  even  the  sick  or 
dying  were  compelled  to  lie  upon  the 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  79 

cold  floor,  their  expectorating  making 
the  surroundings  dangerous  for  the 
rest.  As  an  instance,  the  case  of  Aron- 
tchik  may  be  cited.  Paralyzed  and  in- 
sane, he  remained  in  his  cell  for  more 
than  two  years.  Judging  from  the 
number  of  deaths  in  prison  we  may 
say  that  this  was  not  an  exceptional 
case. 

For  new  arrivals  and  those  who 
were  guilty  of  slight  offenses  in  prison, 
disciplinary  cells  were  in  readiness. 
They  were  dungeons  in  a  separate  part 
of  the  building,  damp  and  dark,  known 
among  the  prisoners  as  the  ' '  Stable. ' ' 
They  had  been  established  by  "Her- 
od" in  the  Sts.  Peter  and  Paul  Fort- 
ress and  were  subsequently  introduced 
by  him  in  the  Bastille.  It  is  asserted 
that  once  placed  in  the  l '  Stable, ' '  the 
revolutionists  were  subjected  to  such 
extraordinary  brutalities  that  as  a 
result  few  left  it  alive.  In  the  Alexeiff 
Ravelin  there  were  a  few  isolated  and 


80  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

extraordinarily  guarded  cells,  wher&- 
from  no  knocking  could  be  heard 
and  no  noise  could  reach  and 
the  fate  of  the  inmates  of  those 
cells  is  hardly  known.  Alexan- 
der Mikhailoff  and  Kletochnikoff  were 
placed  in  the  "Stable" .  after  Net- 
chaieff.  Alexander  Mikhailoff  organ- 
ized the  most  daring  and  complicated 
enterprises.  He  secured  for  Kletoch- 
nikoff a  position  in  the  Third  Section 
of  the  Police  Department,  which  had 
charge  of  political  prosecutions.  Klet- 
ochnikoff served  three  years  in  the  De- 
partment and  constantly  advised  the 
Executive  Committee  of  his  Party  of 
all  the  movements  of  the  Police.  His  su- 
periors, however,  did  not  suspect  him. 
They  even  honored  him  with  the  Cross 
of  St.  Stanislaw.  The  members  of  the 
Executive  Committee  joked  when  they 
congratulated  each  other  upon  the 
"promotion"  of  their  member.  Ow- 
ing to  Kletochnikoff,  the  Third  Section 


THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE  81 

could  not  check  the  activity  of  the  rev- 
olutionists. It  was  suspected  of  polit- 
ical unreliability  and  Alexander  II. 
charged  it  with  treason.  Kletochni- 
koff's  arrest,  however,  was  due  to  a 
mere  accident.  He  visited  a  friend 
after  a  house  search  and  before  he  had 
received  word  about  it  and  was  sur- 
prised by  members  of  the  ordinary  po- 
lice, which  kept  watch  in  the  house. 
It  is  hard  to  imagine  the  anger  of  the 
gendarmes  when  they  made  this  dis- 
covery. In  February,  1882,  he  was 
convicted  to  death.  His  sentence  was 
commuted  to  life  imprisonment.  He 
was  corked  up  in  the  Eavelin,  then 
transferred  to  the  ' '  Stable, ' '  where  he 
was  subjected  to  the  most  improvised 
tortures  and  died  in  1883. 

The  Schlusselburg  regime  continued 
the  deadly  work  begun  in  the  Sts. 
Peter  and  Paul  Fortress.  The  heroes 
of  the  "People's  Will,"  one  after  the 
other,  descended  into  their  graves.  It 


82  THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

was  the  desire  of  those  in  power  to 
force  these  men  and  women  to  plead 
for  clemency  or  pardon.  Orjevsky, 
Shebecco  and  Plehve  had  cynically  de^ 
fended  the  system  in  vogue  in  the  Bas- 
tille, on  the  ground  that  it  had  for  its 
"good"  object  the  breaking  of  the 
will  of  the  prisoners.  But  the  history 
of  the  Bastille  does  not  record  one  case 
of  a  "  broken  will, ' '  of  a  plea  for  mercy 
or  leniency! 

They  died  in  loneliness  and  helpless- 
ness, forgotten  and  forsaken,  but  they 
never  submitted  or  implored  and  al- 
ways remained  proud  and  true  to  their 
ideal.  And  when  death  arrived,  when 
the  last  suffering  sigh  subsided,  the 
noise  caused  by  the  gendarmes  remov- 
ing the  body,  would  announce  to  the 
inmates  that  one  of  theirs  had  per- 
ished, leaving  his  cell  for  another  to 
fill.  And  what  beauty  of  human  soul 
and  great  fidelity  to  the  ideal  are  found 
in  the  tragic  images  of  these  martyred 


THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE  83 

apostles  of  liberty!  One  can  not  read 
without  tears  the  incident  described  by 
Polivanoff.  When  sick  and  on  the 
verge  of  insanity  he  contemplated  sui- 
cide, and  so  informed  Kolodkewitch, 
his  friend  in  the  adjoining  cell,  Kolod- 
kewitch, who  was  dying,  crawled  on 
his  crutches  to  the  wall,  knocked  words 
of  consolation  and  courage  and  dis- 
suaded Polivanoff  from  committing 
suicide.  One  morning,  however,  Pol- 
ivanoff ?s  knock  to  Kolodkewitch  re- 
mained unanswered.  He  soon  heard 
the  familiar  noise  and  thus  learned  of 
the  end  of  a  friend,  who,  on  the  eve  of 
death,  did  not  fail  by  word  of  courage 
and  hope  to  preserve  the  life  of  a  de- 
spairing comrade. 

Of  course,  the  system  provoked 
stormy  protests  by  the  incarcerated 
men  and  women.  General  and  individ- 
ual hunger  strikes  frequently  took 
place.  In  one  case  Michael  Shebalin, 
as  a  protest  against  his  unlawful  im- 


84  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

prisonment  in  Schlusselburg,  refused 
meals  during  twenty-one  days.  He  de- 
manded his  return  to  his  wife  and  son 
in  Siberia.  The  unfortunate  man  did 
not  know  that  they  had  died  long  be- 
fore in  the  Moscow  Prison.  In  1899 
the  entire  prison  starved  for  eleven 
days  in  order  to  remove  restrictions 
placed  upon  their  little  library,  en- 
larged sometime  before.  But  this 
method  of  protest,  agonizing  for  the 
prisoners,  was  not  very  effective.  The 
prison  keepers  well  knew  that  it  was 
hard  to  accomplish  death  in  this  man- 
ner, as  only  a  few  could  endure  hunger 
for  any  length  of  time.  Then,  too,  it 
was  possible  to  feed  by  force  those  who 
weakened.  Such  forcible  feeding  was 
practiced  many  a  time  by  the  lackeys 
in  the  Bastille,  who  bore  the  name  of 
physicians.  The  conduct  of  the  prison 
physicians  was  such  that  in  1884  Min- 
akoff,  in  a  fiat  of  anger,  threw  a  dish  at 
Dr.  Zarkowitch.  For  this  act  he  was 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  85 

court  martialed  and  sentenced  to  be 
shot.  He  had  sought  death  and  had 
purposely  committed  the  act.  He  re- 
fused to  petition  for  mercy  and  was 
not  allowed  to  communicate  with  his 
parents  before  execution.  On  the  6th 
day  of  September,  1884,  the  prisoners 
heard  a  cry,  "Good-bye,  brothers, 
good-bye,  I  am  going  to  be  shot!" 
This  was  MinakofPs  happy  walk  to 
death.  It  happened  three  months  after 
his  term  of  imprisonment  began. 

A  few  hours  after  the  execution  Kli- 
menko  was  found  hanging  in  his  cell. 
In  October  of  the  same  year  Lieuten- 
ant Tikhanowitch  had  also  committed 
suicide. 

Minakoff  ?s  insubordination  was  fol- 
lowed by  that  of  Ippolit  Mishkin,  who 
invited  capital  punishment  by  strik- 
ing another  prison  official. 

While  a  youth,  Mishkin  was  a  re- 
porter for  the  reactionary  Moscow  Ve- 
domosti.  In  1871  he  was  sent  by  Kat- 


86  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

koff,  the  editor  of  the  paper,  to  report 
the  trial  of  the  so-called  Netchaieff 
conspirators.  Here  Mishkin  for  the 
first  time  became  acquainted  with  rev- 
olutionary ideas,  and  he  soon  after  de- 
termined to  devote  his  life  to  the  revo- 
lution. In  1875,  dressed  like  a  gen- 
darme, Mishkin  went  to  Viluisk,  in  the 
Yakutsk  Province  in  Siberia,  to  res- 
cue Tchernishevsky,  the  famous  writer 
and  economist,  who  was  at  hard  labor 
there.  Tchernichevsky  had  been  the 
hope  of  the  revolutionists  for  a  num- 
ber of  decad'es  and  many  men  and 
women  dreamed  of  his  rescue  and  at- 
tempted it  at  various  times.  Mishkin 
presented  to  the  local  authorities  an 
order  from  the  Irkutsk  chief  of  gen- 
darmes, directing  them  to  place  Tcher- 
nishevsky in  his  custody  for  transpor- 
tation to  Irkutsk.  Mishkin  was,  how- 
ever, suspected  and  compelled  to  flee, 
which  he  did  in  a  boat  and  sailed  north 
on  the  Lena  River.  He  was  caught 


THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE  87 

and  taken  to  Bussia,  where  he  was 
wanted  for  his  agitation  among  the 
peasants  and  for  the  establishment  of 
a  secret  printing  plant.  After  a  pre- 
liminary imprisonment,  which  lasted 
four  years,  Mishkin  was  tried  in  the 
famous  trial  of  "193,"  together  with 
Katherine  Breshkovsky.  His  speech 
in  court  was  for  many  years  consid- 
ered the  gospel  of  revolution.  He  was 
sentenced  to  ten  years  at  hard  labor. 
While  in  the  Central  Prison  in  Khar- 
koff,  awaiting  deportation  to  Siberia, 
he  made  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to 
escape  by  the  way  of  an  opening  in  a 
wall,  which  he  himself  dug  out.  While 
in  the  Irkutsk  Jail  Mishkin  made  his 
famous  speech  at  the  grave  of  a  revo- 
lutionist, Dmoehovsky.  Denouncing 
the  system  which  brought  about  the 
early  death  of  his  comrade,  he  closed 
by  saying:  "And  upon  the  soil 
drenched  with  the  blood  of  the  mar- 
tyrs, the  tree  of  liberty  will  rise!" 


88  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

For  this  speech  Mishkin's  term  of  hard 
labor  was  prolonged.  Katherine 
Breshkovsky  in  her  biography  of 
Mishkin  comments  upon  these  inci- 
dents in  his  life  as  follows:  "Two 
speeches — two  hard  labors."  From 
Kara  he  made  a  successful  escape  with 
a  workman  named  Krustchoff,  and 
reached  Vladivostok.  But  aa  insignif- 
icant incident  again  placed  him  in  the 
hands  of  the  police.  It  was  then  that 
the  government  decided  to  imprison 
him  in  the  Bastille. 


vn 

Knocking  on  the  walls,  although  for- 
bidden, was  the  only  means  of  com- 
munication between  the  prisoners,  and, 
of  course,  afforded  great  relief.  The 
unwritten  rule  among  the  prisoners  re- 
quired that  every  knock  should  at  all 
times  be  answered  by  the  one  to  whom 
it  had  been  directed,  no  matter  how 
sick  or  exhausted  he  may  have  been. 
But  each  knock  and  answer  invariably 
resulted  in  the  incarceration  of  the 
offender,  male  or  female,  in  the 
"Stable,"  and  this  innocent  pastime 
brought  torture.  "Sick  and  ex- 
hausted," relates  Vera  Mgner,  "with 
tears  in  my  eyes,  and  anxious  for  rest, 
I  would  step  to  the  wall  and  answer 
the  knock.  But  right  here  the  door 
would  open  and  the  gendarmes  with 
the  yell,  'Do  not  knock,'  would  force 

89 


90  THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

their  entrance  into  the  cell  and  the 
guilty  would  be  dragged  into  the 
' Stable.'  " 

On  one  occasion  Vera  Figner  said  to 
Herod : 

"Why  do  you  not  drag  me?" 

Herod  looked  at  the  short  figure  of 
th'e  woman  and  said: 

"Whom  should  I  drag,  you?" 

And  a  moment  later  'she  was  also  in 
the  "Stable." 

It  should  not  be  wondered  at  that 
the  prisoners  refused  all  favors  from 
the  gendarmes.  When  Chief  She- 
becco,  on  his  visit  to  jail,  entered  the 
cell  of  Madam  Wolkenstein,  the  follow- 
ing conversation  took  place : 

"Your  mother,"  said  Shebecco, 
"saw  me  and  I  could  tell  you" — 

"Are  you  General  Shebecco ? ' '  inter- 
rupted Madam  Wolkenstein. 

"lam." 

"From  you,"  continued  the  prison- 


THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE  91 

er,  "I  will  not  receive  regards,  even 
from  my  mother. ' ' 

Another  method  of  torture,  more 
poignant  than  anything  else  described, 
was  the  placing  and  retaining  of  in- 
sane prisoners  in  the  Bastille.  Ignatius 
Ivanoff,  who  was  an  inmate  of  the  Kas- 
an  House  for  the  Insane  prior  to  the 
re-establishment  of  the  Bastille,  was 
brought  to  the  latter  place  apparently 
for  the  purpose  of  harassing  the  other 
prisoners,  since  he  had  been  declared 
hopelessly  insane  in  the  institution 
from  which  he  was  taken.  Shortly 
thereafter  Stchedrin,  Arontchik,  Juva- 
sheff,  Pokhitonoff  and  Konashevitch 
went  insane.  The  latter  could  hard- 
ly endure  the  three  years  of  prelimi- 
nary imprisonment  in  the  St.  Peter's 
Fortress,  and  in  expectation  of  a  death 
sentence,  said  to  the  Court:  "I  do  not 
ask  nor  do  I  want  your  leniency. ' J  He 
preferred  the  gallows  to  imprisonment, 
but  was  sent  to  the  Bastille.  Insanity 


92  THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

was  the  lot  of  many.  Some  were  sub- 
ject to  quiet  and  harmless  attacks  of 
mental  debility.  Some  had  violent  at- 
tacks; they  laughed,  they  sang,  they 
cried,  they  shouted,  and  their  wild 
shouts  shattered  the  nerves  of  the  sane 
inmates.  The  mania  of  some  of  the  in- 
sane was  their  successful  escape  from 
prison,  and  that  of  others  was  perse- 
cution or  the  mania  of  greatness.  The 
sane  considered  it  the  height  of  happi- 
ness to  see  their  afflicted  comrades  re- 
moved to  a  medical  institution,  and 
they  often  appealed  to  the  authorities, 
on  their  visits  to  the  jail,  to  remove 
the  sick  or  insane,  but  mostly  without 
avail. 

Last,  but  not  least,  of  the  horrible 
incidents  of  this  inferno,  were  the  exe- 
cutions. It  was  the  rule  to  send  those 
who  were  sentenced  to  death  to  the 
Bastille,  there  to  be  hanged  within  a 
day  or  two  after  their  arrival.  The 
inmates  often  learned  of  approaching 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  93 

executions  of  newly  arrived  revolu- 
tionists. The  promenades  would  cease. 
Tlie  noise  around  the  prison  would  in- 
crease, the  sound  of  the  work  about 
the  gallows  would  tell  the  rest. 

On  the  10th  day  of  October,  1884, 
Schlusselburg  saw  the  hanging  of 
Army  Officers  Eogatcheff  and  Strom- 
berg.  During  this  period  Mishkin  and 
Minakoff  were  shot.  On  the  10th  day 
of  May,  1887,  it  saw  the  execution  of 
five  young  students  accused  of  con- 
spiracy against  the  life  of  Alexander 
III.  On  the  3d  day  of  May,  1902,  Steph- 
en Balmashoff  gave  up  his  life  in  the 
Bastille.  On  the  10th  day  of  May, 
1905,  Ivan  Kaliaieff  was  hanged  there. 
In  the  same  manner,  Hyman  Hersh- 
kovitch  and  Alexander  Wasilieff,  both 
minors,  were  executed  within  one  hour 
on  the  20th  day  of  August,  1905.  On 
the  10th  day  of  September,  1906,  the 
Bastille  was  consecrated  anew  by  the 
blood  of  Zinaida  Konopliannikova. 


94  THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

The  young  revolutionists  triumphed 
in  their  death.  Balmashoff  refused  to 
take  the  consolation  from  the  priest, 
saying  to  him:  "I  cannot  be  false 
with  you."  Crossing  the  prison  yard 
on  his  way  to  the  cell  for  his  last  sleep 
on  this  earth,  he  removed  his  hat  and 
bowed  in  the  direction  of  the  cell  win- 
dows around  the  yard  in  the  hope  of 
reaching  and  greeting  the  elder  pris- 
oners, as  if  inviting  their  blessing  be- 
fore death. 

Kaliaieff  was  approached  before  ex- 
ecution by  the  prosecutor  with  a  prop- 
osition to  petition  the  Czar.  The  pros- 
ecutor entered  the  cell  eight  times, 
each  time  receiving  Kaliaieff  ?s  stub- 
born refusal.  When  before  the  gal- 
lows Kaliaieff  said  to  one  of  the  offi- 
cials : 

"Tell  my  comrades  that  I  die  in  joy 

and  that  I  will  forever  be  with  them." 

Wasilieff  coolly  took  leave  of  the  in- 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  95 

mates  and  with  a  bow  to  the  witnesses, 
ascended  the  gallows. 

Hershkovitch  enjoined  his  mother 
not  to  petition  for  a  commutation  of 
the  sentence  and  when  he  reached  the 
place  of  execution  he  said  to  the  sur- 
rounding officials: 

"You  have  come  to  see  my  death. 
I  die  coolly  and  I  know  that  the  time 
will  soon  come  when  the  people  will 
avenge  our  death. 9 ' 

Konopliannikova  herself  placed  the 
noose  around  her  neck  and  with  the 
word  "Beady!"  gave  the  signal  to 
death. 

The  bodies  of  all  victims  were 
thrown  into  graves  dug  in  the  prison 
yard  and  chopped  wood  placed  on  the 
graves. 


vm 

Between  1887  and  1901,  the  Bastille 
had  only  one  new  prisoner,  Sophie 
Ginzberg.  Having  been  placed  in  a 
secluded  tower,  the  girl  committed  sui- 
cide almost  immediately  thereafter, 
and  even  before  she  had  an  opportun- 
ity to  communicate  with  her  comrades. 
In  1901,  young  Karpowitch,  author  of 
the  terrorist  act  against  Secretary  Bo- 
golepoff,  was  brought  in.  He  carried 
life  and  hope  into  the  Bastille. 

During  the  previous  years  the  fe- 
male inmates,  Vera  Figner  and  Lud- 
milla  A.  Wolkenstein,  were  the  only 
upholders  of  hope  and  courage.  Many 
a  man  owed  his  life  to  these  women. 
But  still  suicides  continued.  The 
most  horrible  case  was  that  of  Grat- 
chevsky.  He  soon  tired  of  the  regime 
of  torture  and  insult  and  decided  to 

96 


THE  BUSSIAN  BASTILLE  97 

follow  Mishkin's  example.  He  as- 
saulted one  of  the  various  wardens  and 
demanded  a  trial.  Because  of  the  de- 
mand, a  trial  was  refused  him  and  he 
was  declared  insane.  He  was  not,  how- 
ever, removed  to  an  institution.  He 
then  attempted  to  starve  himself,  but 
was  fed  by  force.  Thereupon  he  threw 
kerosene  from  his  lamp  over  himself 
and  set  it  on  fire.  It  was  a  most  agon- 
izing death,  and  even  those  in  the  dis- 
tant "Stable"  heard  his  shrieks.  Not 
until  after  this  tragedy,  did  the  police 
department  grant  privileges  to  the 
prisoners.  New  books  were  allowed, 
better  meals  introduced,  work  was  per- 
mitted. The  prohibition  of  communi- 
cation by  knocks  was  not  strictly  en- 
forced, and  at  times  the  prisoners  were 
allowed  to  promenade  by  twos.  After 
Sophie  Ginzberg's  suicide,  the  prison- 
ers were  permitted  to  take  care  of  their 
sick  comrades.  At  the  deathbed  of 
Yurkosky,  the  prisoners  were  allowed 


98  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

to  watch  in  turn.  Madam  Wolken- 
stein,  describing  this  singular  incident, 
says  that  for  a  long  time  he  refused  to 
disclose  the  fact  of  his  illness,  believ- 
ing that  no  help  would  come.  The 
physician  came  to  see  him  only  upon 
the  urgent  request  of  his  fellow  pris- 
oners. It  was  then  that  the  adminis- 
tration, as  if  conscience  stricken,  made 
a  special  effort  to  save  his  life,  refus- 
ing, however,  to  transfer  him  to  a  hos- 
pital in  St.  Petersburg.  During  this 
year  (1896)  while  hopelessly  sick,  he 
received  a  letter  from  his  aged  mother, 
who  wrote  that  she  had  given  up  all 
hope  to  obtain  an  interview  with  him, 
since  her  petitions  have  been  declined 
and  she  therefore  sent  him  her  last 
blessing,  her  cross  and  her  prayer 
book,  upon  which  she  prayed  during 
the  sixteen  years  of  his  imprisonment. 
Before  death  he  requested  the  warden 
to  permit  him  to  take  leave  of  the  two 
female  prisoners.  His  request  was 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTELLE  99 

granted.  His  was  the  only  death  at 
which  prisoners  performed  their  last 
duty  to  a  departing  comrade. 

The  regime,  was  not  substantially 
affected  by  the  new  privileges.  For 
the  slightest  violation  of  a  rule,  the  ad- 
ministration still  continued  its  arbi- 
trary and  cruel  punishment.  Thus 
when  Michael  Popoff  attempted  to 
send  a  secret  letter  to  his  mother,  with 
the  aid  of  one  of  the  guards,  the  en- 
tire prison  was  deprived  of  books  and 
magazines,  although  only  magazines 
of  previous  years  were  at  the  time  al- 
lowed in  jail. 


IX 

The  last  thirteen  inmates  of  the  Bas- 
tille, before  October,  1905,  consisted  of 
two  parties.  The  first  party  of  eight 
were  the  remaining  old  prisoners— Lo- 
patin,  Morosoff,  Popoff,  Frolenko,  An- 
tonoff,  Ivanoff,  Loukashevitch  and 
Novorouski;  the  second  party  of  five 
— Gershuni,  Sasonoff,  Sikorsky,  Melni- 
koff  and  Karpowitch,  were  the  young- 
er prisoners.  The  five  young  prison- 
ers, although  ordered  released  from 
the  Bastille,  were  sent  to  Siberia  and 
placed  in  the  Akatoui  hard  labor 
prison.1 

The  old  prisoners  served  various 
terms,  ranging  from  twenty-one  to 
twenty-six  years.  Although  their  sen- 
tences were  definite,  they  could  never 
tell  when  their  terms  would  actually 


1  Gershuni,   Melnikoff  and  Karpowitch   escaped 
from  the  priso-n  in  Siberia. 
100 


THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE  101 

expire.  It  was  a  principle  of  the  au- 
tocracy to  keep  the  inmates  in  ignor- 
ance of  the  time  of  their  release;  and 
even  the  imperial  manifestos,  which 
were  now  and  then  issued,  commuting 
the  sentence  of  convicts,  did  not  al- 
ways apply  to  them. 

Peter  Polivanoff  addressed  in  1903 
an  "open  letter"1  to  N.  V.  Muravieff, 
then  Secretary  of  Justice  in  Russia,  by 
which  he  called  his  attention  to  the  un- 
lawful regime  in  the  Bastille  and  thus 
hoped  to  ameliorate  the  condition  of 
those  who  still  lingered  there. 

Citing  the  14th  volume  of  the  Code 
of  Laws  and  the  Statute  of  ePnalties, 
he  proved  that  the  regime  in  the  Bas- 
tille was  a  violation  of  all  regulations 
provided  by  the  law,  in  that  some  in- 
mates were  illegally  imprisoned  and 
that  among  others,  Logavsky,  who  was 
not  tried  at  all  and  Karpowitch  who 


1  Revolutionary  Russia  (in  Russian),  No.  27, 
July,  1903.  La  Tnoune  Russe  (in  French),  No. 
11,  February,  1904. 


102  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

was  tried  by  an  ordinary  Court,  should 
have  been  sent  to  Siberia,  but  not  to 
the  Fortress;  that  the  Fortress  was  the 
only  prison  where  the  inmates  had 
been  deprived  of  the  privilege  to  be 
visited  by  their  relatives  and  even  on 
the  eve  of  death  or  execution,  old  pa- 
rents had  been  refused  the  permission 
to  see  their  children;  that  the  restric- 
tion of  correspondence  to  and  from  rel- 
atives to  two  short  letters  a  year,  was 
tantamount  to  actual  prohibition  and 
that  up  to  1897,  relatives  could  not  at 
all  write  to  the  prisoners  and  that  some 
of  the  prisoners  have  not  heard  from 
their  relatives  for  fifteen  years,  and  no 
inmate  had  ever  received  word  from 
his  kin  before  he  had  served  ten  years ; 
that  the  restriction  placed  on  books 
and  the  prohibition  to  receive  contri- 
butions for  the  purpose  of  bettering 
the  meals,  have  not  at  all  been  pro- 
vided by  the  Statute,  since  books  and 
donations  were  permitted  in  other 


THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE  103 

jails.  Polivanoff  shows  that  the 
Schlusselburg  Fortress  was  the  only 
prison  which  was  taken  from  the  con- 
trol of  the  general  prison  department 
and  placed  under  the  supervision  of 
the  Secretaries  of  Interior,  who  had  al- 
ways considered  the  revolutionists 
their  personal  enemies,  and  that  such 
a  change  of  the  control  has  not  been 
provided  by  any  law.  He  shows  that 
sections  299-310  of  the  Statute  of  Ex- 
iles and  section  341  of  Volume  14  of 
the  Code  of  Laws,  distinctly  provided 
that  each  sentence  be  reduced  and  that 
prisoneers  be  kept  in  jail  or  at  hard 
labor  only  a  certain  part  of  their  sen- 
tence and  should  thereafter  be  sent  to 
settlements  in  Siberia  and,  that  ac- 
cording to  these  regulations,  all  pris- 
oners except  Karpowitch  should  have 
been  freed  long  prior  to  the  date  of  his 
letter,  and  that  instead  all  had  served 
in  excess  of  their  sentences.  Giving 
more  specific  data,  Polivanoff  asserts 


104  THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

that  in  1903  Loukashewitch,  Novo- 
rouski,  Antonoff,  Lopatin,  Sergius 
Ivanoff  and  Starodworsky  Lad  al- 
ready served  sixteen  years,  of  which 
eight  years  were  in  excess  of  their 
term ;  Vera  Figner,  Ashenbrenner  and 
"Wassily  Ivanoff  had  served  nineteen 
years,  of  which  eleven  years  were  in 
excess  of  their  term;  Morosoff  and 
Frolenko  had  served  twenty-one  years, 
of  which  thirteen  years  were  above 
their  term  and  Popoff  had  then  served 
twenty-three  years,  of  which  fifteen 
years  were  in  excess  of  his  term,  and 
with  all  that  they  were  still  subjected 
to  the  regime  which  had  existed  at  the 
time  they  commenced  their  sentences, 
for  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineties  the 
small  privileges  acquired  by  the  pris- 
oners, through  years  of  sufferings  and 
struggling,  had  been  taken  away  from 
them  by  the  officials  without  cause  or 
reason.  He  finally  showed  that  in  vio- 
lation of  the  general  rule,  that  a  life 


THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE  105 

sentence  meant  twenty  years  without 
the  usual  allowance,  prisoners  were 
kept  there  a  real  life  time  and  that 
some  of  them  who  had  served  the  law- 
ful life  sentence  and  who  had  been  offi- 
cially freed  by  various  manifesto's, 
were  still  in  jail,  and  that  others  who 
had  served  the  full  sentence  and  had 
been  freed  by  the  manifestos,  had  died 
in  jail  long  thereafter. 

Polivanoff's  letter  aroused  wide- 
spread indignation  in  Europe,  but  it 
was  ignored  by  Muravieff. 


One  of  the  eight  men  released  in  Oc- 
tober, 1905,  was  Herman  Alexandro- 
witch  Lopatin.  In  1896  his  sentence 
was  commuted  under  a  manifesto,  but 
Secretary  Goremykin  specially  peti- 
tioned the  Czar  that  the  commutation 
should  not  apply  to  Lopatin.  A  sub- 
sequent manifesto,  known  as  that  of 
August  llth,  also  failed  to  affect  Lo- 
patin 's  status.  Count  Mir  sky  refused 
to  apply  it  to  him  for  th<;  reason  that 
"Lopatin  could  himself  petition  the 
Czar."  There  was  good  reason  why 
Lopatin  should  have  V»een  kept  in 
Schlusselburg  until  freed  by  the  revo- 
lutionary wave,  which  resulted  in  the 
amnesty  of  October,  1905.  He  was  one 
of  those  wonderful  Russians  who  de- 
vote themselves  unreservedly  to  the 
cause  of  his  country.  His  biography 

106 


THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE  107 

is  a  part  of  Russian  revolutionary  his- 
tory. Born  in  1845,  in  1866  he  had 
already  completed  his  university  edu- 
cation and  was  to  become  a  professor 
of  biology  in  the  University  of  St. 
Petersburg.  A  man  of  science,  he  was 
a  friend  of  Karl  Marx  and  Peter  Lav- 
roff.  He  translated  into  Russian  the 
greatest  portion  of  the  first  volume  of 
"Capital."  In  1866  he  was  for  the  first 
time  connected  with  a  revolutionary 
circle,  known  as  the  circle  of  Koroko- 
soff.  In  1867,  he  took  part  in  the  Gari- 
baldi crusade  in  Italy.  Upon  his  re- 
turn to  Russia,  his  first  arrest  took 
place.  A  forcible  speaker,  witty  and 
energetic,  he  was  the  object  of  persecu- 
tion for  a  number  of  years. 

In  1870  he  was  in  London,  whence  he 
went  to  Siberia  to  rescue  Tchernishev- 
sky.  It  was  the  first  attempt  of  its 
kind,  subsequently  followed  by  that 
of  Mishkin  and  others.  He  thought 
that  Tchermshevsky  would  be  in  a  po- 


108  THE  KUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

sition  to  gather  around  himself  all  rev- 
olutionary forces  in  Russia.  Having 
been  discovered  before  he  accom- 
plished his  task,  he  was  arrested,  but 
escaped.  Soon  afterward  we  find  him 
in  Zurich,  assisting  Peter  Lavroff  in 
the  publication  of  the  revolutionary 
mazagine, ' '  Forward. ' J  In  1883,  he  as- 
sisted in  the  publication  of  the  ' '  Mes- 
senger of  the  People's  Will,"  pub- 
lished in  Paris.  His  last  effort  was  to 
reorganize  the  "Narodnaia  Volia" 
which  had  been  crippled  by  the  perse- 
cution of  the  government,  most  of  its 
members  having  been  either  hanged 
or  imprisoned.  In  a  short  time  he  es- 
tablished about  three  hundred  circles 
and  organizations.  In  1884  he  was 
recognized  by  an  agent  of  the  secret 
police  in  St.  Petersburg,  and  after  a 
struggle,  he  was  overpowered.  After 
a  preliminary  imprisonment  of  three 
years  he  was  tried  jointly  with  others, 
the  poet  Melshin  Jacoubovitch  among 


THE  EUSSIAN  BASTILLE  109 

them,  in  June,  1887.  The  gendarmes 
made  an  effort  to  hang  him.  They  ac- 
cused him  of  organizing  the  assassina- 
tion of  Colonel  of  Gendarmes  Sudeikin, 
but  even  the  Military  Court,  before 
which  he  was  tried,  rejected  this  accu- 
sation. In  fact  Lopatin  opposed  terror- 
ism for  a  number  of  years  and  began 
to  advocate  it  only  on  his  last  journey 
to  Russia.  He  was,  however,  sen- 
tenced to  death  as  a  dangerous  revolu- 
tionist, and  his  sentence  was  commuted 
to  life  imprisonment  in  Schlusselburg. 
Altogether  he  has  been  arrested  twen- 
ty-six times,  and  he  has  crossed  the 
threshhold  of  seventeen  prisons.  This 
martyr,  who  is  now  sixty-two  years 
old,  has  served  his  cause  for  forty 
years,  twenty-five  of  which  have  been 
spent  in  jails. 

Such  is  the  brief  story  of  the  Bas- 
tille. We  have  omitted  many  of  its 
shocking  details.  They  are  beyond 
the  imagination  of  those  who  have  not 


110  THE  RUSSIAN  BASTILLE 

lived  through  them.  Only  the  down- 
fall of  the  Russian  autocracy  will 
make  the  repetition  of  such  a  story  im- 
possible. 


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